As promised, I finally have my pictures from Brown Tree Snake hunting on Guam.
In a strange twist of events, I injured the vertebrae in my neck and am being sent home without finishing my deployment.
Anyway, on to the adventures of Guam.
On the 23rd of January, I found this young Brown Tree Snake making his way up the perimeter fence at Polaris Point. He was on the far side of the fence and when approached it dropped off and disappeared into the grass.
That was the only one I saw that night but my spirits were raised - I had seen a wild Brown tree Snake.
The next night was the JACKPOT!
The first snake I found, as were all of them, was on the fence.
He attempted to escape into the concertina wire at the top of the fenceline.
But my trusty collapsable Midwest Hook made short work of his attempted escape.
The next snake was peering down at me from atop the fence as if to say "Are you looking at me?"
Of course I was and he soon joined me at ground level for some photos.
Now these snakes are nocturnal and very secretive. This one slipped into an opening in the very short grass and coiled himself up in an area no bigger than a tin of Skoal or Copenhagen.
But he couldn't resist one good closeup.
The next snake I found had just nabbed a Mutilating Gecko and was determined not to allow my arrival to in any way disturb his meal. I spent the next 40 minutes taking this next series of photos.
And then he just crawled away. It was truly amazing to watch in person.
The next one was about 6 feet long but wouldn't hold still for any decent pictures so this is the best one I got of him.
And the last one that night headed into the concertina wire in an attempt to find a low hanging branch from a nearby tree to escape to.
On the 30th, I went back out with a young sailor from my sub who had expressed an interest in seeing a Brown tree Snake in the wild. We were fortunate enough to find three that night.
He was thrilled to get to hold it and I promised to post his picture for him.
And then this was the last one for that night.
On the 1st of February, a Senior Chief I work with asked if he could go out with us and see what all the hubbub was about. I, of course, was only too happy to oblige.
We only found one Brown Tree Snake that night but it was very accomodating for pictures.
Oddly enough we had heard about there being no birds on Guam. We found this to be a slight exaggeration. No doubt many indigenous ground nesting species have been eradicated but birds do exist and flourish on Guam. This dove was sleeping right next to the fence where we found all of these snakes.
I also promised some mantid pictures. Here are a couple:
Some gecko pictures:
A skink:
And two frogs which, according to the latest field guide for Guam, do not exist on Guam:
I hope you enjoyed my trip to Guam. It is not a common herp trip destination and I wanted to show you some things that you might otherwise have never gotten the chance to see.
from Sasebo, Japan,
Karl H. Betz
