Snake vs Spider

Well, today we spotted a snake in the grass, not that type of "snake in the grass", a real snake, erm, in the grass.

I was with Seow and Vicki, and we had just alighted from the transport, and climbing our way up. Seow was in front, I was in the middle, and Vicki took the rear. And then I spotted it. It was right there! Just next to Seow. If it was a snake it would have bit you. Oh wait, it was a snake, a black cobra to be precise :-P If Seow had stepped out with his right foot instead of his left foot, he would have stepped on it.

Mr. Cobra(or was it Mrs) didn't notice us, or if he did he didn't care. His back was to us and after our initial scare, me and Seow started taking photos with our cameras. Vicki phoned back to warn that we spotted a cobra, and after we watched Cobra slither till he was out of sight, we continued up the slope.

Now, those of us who have worked with Seow before will know that he goes at it like a boy killing snakes. He was understandably shaken after nearly stepping on one though, so I volunteered to take point. Pretty much an uneventful trip up though.

Me and Vicki's assigned graves today were placed... let's just say that if you plotted our path, you would find that it snaked all over the place.

Other than that, our work on documenting the graves proceeded quite smoothly today. Other than Vicki almost walking face first into a rather large spider and screaming loud enough that Seow and Henry working a distance away from us asked us what happened. Black with red markings. Fangs about 0.2cm long. Length measuring about 12cm. That's what happened. And happening at "if it was a snake it would have bit you" distance. In hindsight, perhaps I should have gone for "Vicki, don't move" and then gone up and pulled her away, rather than yelling "Vicki, spider", so that instead of backing into it(the spider), she turned and found herself face to face with it. Nothing else happened to her (or the spider) though.

On our way back, Vicki pointed out another spider. This one, black with yellow markings, was comparable in size to the one we encountered, but I couldn't see the fangs, so I was considerably less impressed :-P A bite by this one (likely) wouldn't puncture the skin, so I mentally filed it under "nuisance", whereas Mr Red Markings had the fangs for the venom to carry through for a bite, so was filed under "potentially dangerous". I'm no expert on venomous spiders though. (Unless you think being bitten by one on the back of the neck back in Tekong and feeling feverish for close to a day as a result makes me an expert :-P)(And no, I don't have spider powers.)

Oh, what happened to the snake? Well, I'm not implying anything but Seow "ate snake" today ;-)