Snake in the Grass

Saw my first Singaporean snake yesterday.

Every lunch time my library colleagues and I walk through the University grounds to a nearby estate canteen to buy our lunch (usually rice with a couple of vegetables & meat although there are other culinary delights available).

Yesterday we paused enroute to watch one of our ground staff snare mangoes from a very large tree, using a long bamboo pole.

They were green and are used as a condiment - sliced thinly with soy sauce and chilli added. The outcome was that I was given a plastic bag of these mangoes (which we had ripening on plastic plates throughout the library - no book collection yet, just lots of mangoes! Today the mangoes on the library ledge have gone - we suspect the cleaners!)

On the way back down the path a small black snake slithered across the pathway.
According to the same groundsman it was a harmless grass snake - he wasn't running anywhere so neither did I!

There are 60 varieties of snake in Singapore so I was bound to bump into one of them at some stage. This Blog records stories about these reptiles.