A Serendipitous Encounter with the Cat Snake

A Serendipitous Encounter with the Cat Snake 

Vinod M Kumar

Cat Snake's stranglehold while injecting its venom

Five months have passed since I moved to ACCC, Five beautiful months amidst this tranquillising environment. Nights are not boring when there are visitors here. Because then I would have company to go for a night walk in and around the campus. Persons who visited lately include Vignesh, Abishek, Sachin and the regular visitor Prasanth. Prasanth came this time to stay the night because we had snakebite awareness programmes in some schools & villages, the next day.

After we finished dinner, we started our night walk towards Mayiladumparai, a rocky place where fan-throated lizards (Sitana marudhamneydhal) are ubiquitous during the day, displaying their characteristic dewlap or fan. Gingi, our loveable and caring dog too joined the walk and she led the way. En route we saw butterflies like Danaid eggfly (Hypolimnas misippus) resting, hanging upside down from leaves. Also, a skittering frog (Euphlyctis cyanphlyctis) crossed our path. We explored the place for about an hour in search of the saw-scaled viper, instead we found some fan throated lizards.

Just when we were about to turn back and return to ACCC, we found an Indian nightjar (Caprimulgus asiaticus). Our efforts to photograph the bird, a master of camouflage, went in vain because Gingi chased it away. But we would’ve no regrets later because thanks to Gingi we were able to witness something spectacular which we would’ve missed if it weren’t for her. When we went looking for that nightjar, we witnessed an action waiting to be unfolded on one of the rocks. 

A common cat snake (Boiga trigonata) was silently closing in on a garden lizard (Calotes versicolor) and was inches away to catch it. Not to disturb the hunt, we didn’t get near the snake and kept a safe distance from it. Within seconds, the cat snake bit the lizard strangled it and didn’t let go of it, even when both of them were rolling on the slope of rock surface. The lizard tried hard to escape from the stranglehold, but it couldn’t do so. It took around 5 minutes for the venom to kill this large lizard. It took a while for the snake to locate the head and started swallowing the catch head-first.

Cat Snake swallowing its prey head first

Once it caught the lizard, we started photographing the whole scene. I was unlucky for the third time that I didn’t have my DSLR, while I have encountered a snake. Previous two times were when I spotted a vine snake (Ahaetulla nasuta) and a hump-nosed pit viper (Hypnale hypnale) inside KMTR. But I didn’t miss any action again this time, thanks to my reliable mobile camera. We were very close to the snake while photographing, but we made sure that we never disturbed it. 

Neither the snake ran away leaving behind its catch nor does it regurgitate its meal after it is finished. It was amazing to watch the muscles of this greatly feared creature move the food down along the throat and into its long stomach. Luckily gingi too didn’t disturb it, she went for some rounds & also took short naps in between.

Finishing a sumptuous meal

The prey in its belly

It was 10 p.m when the snake caught the lizard and took more than an hour to swallow the prey completely. After a few minutes of looking around, it managed to find a nice place, inside the dense bushes, to hide from the predators while it digests the food.

A hide out to digest the prey

We both, being photographers, were satisfied and really happy to have witnessed this event from start to finish and it was a different experience filming the whole scene in my mobile camera. Time was 11.30 p.m, realised it’s time for us to go to sleep and we started our walk towards ACCC chatting how “Good things happen when we least expect it”.