MAUI NEWS (Wailuku, Hawaii) 28 February 06 Snake hunters scouring Wahikuli (Brian Perry)
Lahaina: Snake hunters, working in two teams of two, have been making daily raids into Wahikuli Village to try to catch a possibly venomous snake spotted crawling under a fence at a residence on Feb. 20.
If the snake is poisonous, which state officials remained unsure of Monday, then those hunting it are left with a "very, very bad search situation," said Fern Duvall, the state wildlife biologist on Maui.
Exercising ample caution, the snake hunters are working in an old residential area with a lot of debris available for the serpent to hide, Duvall said.
"We don’t want to end up on the wrong side of the snake," he said.
The daily searches, ongoing since Friday, start in the morning and go on for two to three hours, Duvall said.
He said he believes it’s possible the snake is staying in the vicinity where it was spotted, although it’s probably hiding in a secluded area, digesting whatever food it might have caught. (Food sources include rodents and lizards.)
Duvall said the area "offers everything a snake would want" – ample food, shelter and water.
Trying to lure the snake out of hiding, 25 traps baited with live mice have been laid out in the Wahikuli area, he said. But, making the snake’s capture more difficult is the area’s ample supply of wild rodents, making the traps less inviting for the snake.
Duvall said snake hunters are using poison, approved by the state Department of Health, to "knock down" the wild rodent population, leaving the mice-baited traps as a more enticing place for a meal.
He said officials have gone house to house in Wahikuli, warning residents that a snake has been spotted in their neighborhood.
Signs were posted as warnings as well, but they’ve been stolen, possibly by people taking them as collector’s items, Duvall said.
"It would be nice if the signs were left in place," he said.
The signs have information on who to call if a snake is sighted. (That phone number is 643-PEST, or 643-7378. People also can call the Maui Police Department at 244-6400.)
"We definitely want people to be extremely cautious," he said.
Duvall also cautioned area residents that baited traps are likely to be "focal points for the snake, hopefully," and areas near, under or around a trap should be pproached cautiously.
Officials taking part in the snake hunt are from the state Department of Agriculture and the Department of Land and Natural Resources. They are being assisted by representatives of the Maui Invasive Species Committee.
The traps were provided by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the rodent poison came from the state Health Department, Duvall said.
"It’s a very big collaborative effort," he said.
Although the snake initially was seen Feb. 20, state officials did not conduct a search of the area until Thursday, Duvall said.
He said the state’s response was delayed because the man who saw the snake speaks Spanish and no English and didn’t know that snakes do not belong in Hawaii.
The incident initially was reported Feb. 21, but a Spanish-speaking translator needed to be found for officials to interview the witness, finally, on Wednesday.
Duvall said he learned of the snake sighting Thursday afternoon and began a search of the area then.
The man interviewed by state officials was "very good at giving details" and showed some familiarity with snakes because he had worked in fields in Mexico, Duvall said.
The man described the snake as being 12 to 14 inches long. He saw it slithering on the ground, moving in an undulating manner and slipping under a fence.
"He tried to actually kill the snake using his weed whacker," Duvall said.
He said officials concluded the snake is possibly venomous after the man described its movements and identified a photo of a poisonous snake as being what he believed he saw.
Duvall declined to say what species of snake the man identified. He said it was not a brown tree snake, the species of snake that nearly has wiped out the bird population on the island of Guam, a U.S. territory in the Western Pacific.
The man described the snake as being gray and not glossy, and he didn’t describe any pattern for the snake’s scales, according to Duvall.
"It moved fast," Duvall said, adding that officials believe the snake is active during the daytime and probably crawls on the ground rather than climbing trees.
Duvall said officials are investigating where the snake came from and how it might have arrived on Maui.
While the focus of snake hunters is in the Wahikuli area, they’re also searching for what’s believed to be a nonvenomous garter snake seen in the second week of February by golfers on a course in Kapalua, Duvall said. Officials saw tracks in sand traps that verified a snake had been on the golf course.
Traps have been set to try to capture that snake as well, he said.
The garter snake is either brown or black with yellow lines running the length of its body, according to Duvall. It’s about 18 inches long and as thick as a person’s thumb.
Snake hunters scouring Wahikuli

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