Saturday, February 7, 2009

Keelbacks in Freezing Water

As I photographed many sceneries at the Waterfalls, I was asked to go and call the driver to come to the water. As I went, I heard a man telling another guy to look at where he was pointing to. I overheard what he said, and turned my head to look. What I then saw was a long, limbless creature basking in the sunlight: A Snake! I immediately moved forward to photograph the snake before it moved away. But I still kept a catious distance as I did not know what snake it was. Fortunately for me, the snake didn't seem to have sensed my approach, and stayed where it was, without even moving a little.
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After taking a few shots, my sister suddenly came towards me. The snake sensed her fast movement and turned its head a little. My sister, upon hearing this, screamed and ran away, shouting that it was alive. I knew it was alive, but she thought that it was dead as it wasn't moving.
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The snake seemed to have had enough of me, and so he slowly slithered into the water, and below the rock. As it moved, I took a photograph of it. I knew that I may not see it again.
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I came back to the spot I saw the snake after walking through the pathways of both waterfalls. I didn't see any snakes, so I assumed that it had slithered far down to the center of the waterfall. But as I walked back to the shelter, I noticed something touching my feet. And it was a snake too! It was another of the same snake that I saw before, just that this individual was smaller and its skin colour was much lighter. After getting the fact that I'm actually a human, it immediately swam under a huge rock in the water. A few minutes from then, it came out to breathe. I took my chance and photographed the snake.
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I took out my book to check out what snake it was. By looking at the photographs, it was most probably a Checkered Keelback. It is an egg laying reptile and is essentially a water snake although it does not breath underwater. It lays its eggs on land and is a very common non venomous snake of India. Most live in fresh water and in Paddy Fields. It get its name from it's strongly keeled scales on its body with 5 rows of black spots on it's yellowish brown colour spread across the length of the snake.

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