Beautiful visitor – Chrysopelea paradisi variabilis

A beautiful visitor yesterday enriched our daily life.

Shortly after our usual morning coffee break around 9 a.m., we discovered a beautiful visitor – a snake – in our garden. I fetched my camera and could take some photos before our gardener arrived and ended the life of the beauty. 😥

Kill such a beautiful visitor?

For me this is a difficult question! On the one side these animals are beautiful and surely important in the nutrition chain. On the other side we did not know whether this snake is poisonous or not. A bite from the wrong snake might be fatal. We don’t know if the hospital on our remote island has a antidotes for the venomous snakes. Anyway, I had no decision to take. Danilo our gardener, assisted by Pups, our dog, did the job.

The hunt for ID

I wanted to know what kind of snake our beauty has been. I didn’t find it on the web. So I posted a short article with a photo on my facebook wall and in our local expats group. Already a short time after our snake was almost identified. It has been a Chrysopelea ornata or a Chrysopelea paradisi. With these names I scanned the web and stumbled over two good websites that will help me in the future to save a snakes life. The websites are The Reptile Database and iNaturalist.

With these two websites I could clearly identify our temporary guest as a Chrysopelea paradisi variabilis. This species is considered mildly venomous, with no confirmed cases of medically significant envenomation. It is not considered dangerous to man. Here are more stunning pictures of this beautiful animal.

Excellent tree climber

With the photo below I learned what these snakes are eating – Geckos!

A really stunning snake

I really became a fan of this snake and continued to dig deeper in the world wide web. I found a really jaw dropping ability of this beautiful visitor: it can fly! This FAQ page is also very interesting to read.

Really incredible. A wonderful sample of #FeelCamiguin.

[GARD]