Nemesis Bird, definition:
A bird that is highly sought after by an individual birder but despite repeated efforts to be seen, remains elusive and is not able to be added to the birder's life list. Nemesis birds are often regularly seen by other local birders and the birder missing each sighting can eventually come to see finding the bird as a quest or challenge to one's birding honor. Birders may chase their nemesis bird for years before finally achieving a suitable sighting to turn the nemesis bird into a lifer.There are nemesis herps, too, and I'm sure each of you has at least one. For me, it's the cobra - any cobra. It took me almost two years to find my first
Naja atra in Taiwan, but I thought that was the karmic price I paid for seeing so many other rare snakes along the way. Little did I know that the entire Naja family has it in for me: since our arrival in Borneo, I've heard at least one person per week mentioning a sighting of the Sumatran Cobra (
Naja sumatrana, aka Equatorial Spitting Cobra), the only, but ubiquitous member of the genus on the island. People keep telling me how these elapids, being opportunists, populate the huge, rat-infested storm drains surrounding every house in Kuching (including ours); strangers tell me about their meetings with cobras in their yards and gardens, where the snakes sometimes kill the family dogs or cats; and we've even received a few calls from friends asking us to remove cobras from their tulip patches, but always arrived after the snake had hauled cloaca. There's even a confirmed story about a spitter (this species is capable of spraying venom) that was found in a bank vault in downtown Kuching. And, of course, we see Crêpe Suzette
a la Sumatranois all the time on country roads.
But never a live one. Nope, not a single one. Instead, Fate keeps messing with our heads by throwing oodles of Bornean Short Pythons our way. This is the snake for a glimpse of which every visiting herper would sell his or her old mother into slavery, but
Python breitensteini hardly ever grants an audience to mortal men. My son and I, on the other hand, have already seen and caught
five of the pudgy little buggers, all of them within exactly one month's time - the last three within
two hours! That's like winning five Lamborghinis in a row at the Dubai Airport Luxury Car Raffle. But ask Fate for a humble, simple, dirt-common cobra, and the bitch chucks your application straight into the shredder.
Yet now, there's a glimmer of hope. Either Ms Fate has a new, kind-hearted office assistant who took pity on us, or her shredder malfunctioned, because last night our prayers were finally answered. Up to that moment, my son and I had been enjoying a fantastic male-bonding weekend: On Saturday we went go-karting and followed up with an all-night herping trip that yielded
three Bornean Short Pythons (see immature whine above) and a little Wagler's, and laser-tagging and shooting pool had filled out the day part of the Sunday. That would have been good enough for most people to just stay home that Sunday night and watch Discovery Turbo, but for some reason I was antsy for more kicks. We had found no snakes at all the previous weekend, not even DORs, because our favorite cruising road, usually as traffic-dead as Central Greenland, had been inundated with all sorts of vehicles as well as pedestrians, as it was the "Gawai" weekend - the annual harvest festival observed by most indigenous tribes in Sarawak. Consequently, it had already been two weeks of no snakes for Hans & Hans, and while Hans didn't really mind, the other Hans did. So I proposed dinner at our favorite Indian greasy spoon, followed by a quick jaunt along the road outside Kubah National Park, where we had found quite a number of DORs during our early days, but never a live snake, therefore eventually abandoning the place for scalier pastures. But it's only half an hour away, just right for a quick herping fix, it being a school night and all. Even if we didn't see any snake, at least I'd get my cruising jones taken care of, plus we could always count on observing a Malaysian Eared Nightjar (
Eurostopodus temminckii) or two, a highly peculiar nocturnal bird that operates very close to the ground and that displays a ridiculous lack of fear of motorized vehicles.
Fired up by a bellyful of Tamil grub (not for ulcer patients, that stuff), we arrived at our target road at 8 PM, did one loop, saw nothing, did another round, and then spotted a long, slender, and very black snake about to disappear into the grass on the other side of the road. I knew immediately what it was (not a brilliant herpetological feat, as there's only one nocturnal snake here that looks like that). I slapped Hans, who had already fallen asleep (too much male bonding, I suspect), on the thigh, yelled "COBRA!!!", and got out of the car. "Getting out of the car", by the way, requires a series of intricately interwoven moves for me: hit the brakes, pull the handbrake, put the gear in P, hit the hazard light, remove the key from the ignition, grab the tongs, switch on the headlamp, and then attempt to unscrew my massive frame and long legs from under the steering wheel and heave them all outside. I don't know how many snakes I've lost over the years just because I wasn't riding a f*****g bicycle instead.
Anyway, upon hearing the C-word (the
other C-word, you perverts), Hans snapped straight from his slumber into action, shot out the door and ran almost fifty yards along the dark road in the direction we'd come from, yelling "Where is it? WHERE IS IT??" all the while. The snake was actually sitting right next to the car, on the driver's side, where I had been lucky enough to hook it back onto the asphalt just in time.
After the team had regrouped around the cobra, brainstorming ensued. How to proceed? We knew very little about the animal and its behavioral patterns, only that it was a potentially lethal elapid capable of spraying a fine mist of venom about three feet, aiming with surprising accuracy at the enemy's eyes. So, first order of the night: goggles. We'd been carrying two pairs of industrial-strength goggles in the camera bag for the last ten months, in anticipation of the armies of Sumatran Cobras we were sure to encounter on a daily basis. Good thing we never left them at home out of sheer frustration, because now their time had come. Hans put on his pair (I wear glasses anyway), and then we decided on the second order of the night: we'd take it slow. No intimate close-ups into the snake's nostrils, no messing around with it to make it hood up, no, until we'd gotten a feel for the beast, we'd just take a few leisurely shots of the snake moving around on the tarmac.
And move around it did. In fact, during the entire half hour we spent with the cobra, it only came to a complete halt once, at the very end, and even then for not much longer than 60 precious seconds. My experience with Chinese Cobras had taught me that, while they all want to get away at first, they will eventually tire and then hood up in an upright position, awaiting your next move like a spent boxer, by which time you can take all the time and pictures you want. No such luck with our new friend, though. After a series of top-down photos, we deemed it time for the money shot (if you'll pardon the crude metaphor). The snake had shown no sign of counter-aggression whatsoever, let alone spitting, and we were getting somewhat more comfortable around it. But when you catch a cobra for photos, you want - no, expect! - it to come through with its trademark pose. If it doesn't, you need to help it along. Alas, none of the stunts we tried worked, not even the normally sure-fire trick to stroke the snake's throat with repeated upward moves, ending at the chin. But no. No sitting up. No hooding. Nope. Nada. It was maddening. The only time the animal semi-flared its hood and lifted its jaw an inch off the ground was when I put my boot in front of its mug and showed it the sole. That did catch the snake's attention to a degree, but then, I was not sure if a size 14 hiking boot in its face wouldn't tick it off so badly that it actually started spraying...and by that time we were already quite comfortable with its unmanly behavior. If only it had hooded up just a little...like a real cobra! But maybe there's a peacenik movement going on in the world of
N. sumatrana, based on the premise that hooding up and - Gaia forbid! - spraying venom are the reptilian equivalents to caveman machismo like chest-thumping and alligator boots?
I don't know, so I'll throw the question to all of you cobra experts out there: why the timidity? The lack of action? Is this species-specific? Or due to lack of testosterone? Or did we manage to find the only cobra dork between here and Kalimantan?
PS: This snake is the darkest animal I've ever met. The metallic, bluish-black tint has to be seen to be believed and made up a little for the dearth of action...
Never leave your hat on the road...
These two are the only "action" shots we got. And for the second one, the flash malfunctioned :-)
Farewell, Mr. Naja...
(Criminally OT, but what the hell: For those who didn't get the header's immensely clever reference to David Quammen's short, but delectable Darwin biography "The Reluctant Mr Darwin", let me highly recommend that book to you. It should be the first thing to read if you're going to research ol' Chucky Dee's life, work and importance. Quammen is one of America's most engaging and accessible science writers today, certainly one of my top favorites. I found "The Song of the Dodo - Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinctions" such a riveting yarn (in spite of its dusty-creaky title) that I bought a dozen copies and sent them to all my best friends, just to make sure they would read it... 
Mon 12 Nov - 21:50
