What a Stroke of Luck!

Had a good mid-morning run though the trail at Admiralty Park today.

As I was plodding on my last round of the day, I had to suddenly jam on my brakes - not that I was running that fast - but I did so more out of shock ...As I saw a regular looking "twig" out of many, lying among a litter of dried leaves, suddenly move and slither off to the bushes!

Geez... I had to stop short, making sure that it was not harming me, nor I am to it! I stood there, marveling at what I had seen, trying to take good final looks of it through the natural blurred lens of my myopic eyes, before it slithered off gracefully to the side of the trail, out of sight.

What a stroke of Good Luck! I have always been lamenting on the inability to spot  native slithery creatures whenever I am out on the natural trails. The only vivid memory I had of snake spotting was during a night hike at Bukit Timah Nature Reserve with some ex-colleagues. My colleague had apparently spotted one - a bright coloured one - on the path, dead. As he was a member of the Nature Society, he collected it as a specimen. That was such a long long time ago and the memory is turning as blurry as the sight of my eyes would take me, unaided.

Now this snake that I chanced upon today was very slender, about half a metre or more in length. It appeared silvery coloured to me - I don't run with my glasses on - and looked pretty harmless, like those tree snakes.

Tried to google on the name of the snake I saw at the park - the closest I could get to, is probably the Bronzeback Snake. According to what was researched (on Google of course!), there are a few sub-species of the Bronzeback, and that they are harmless.

Closest to what I had seen this morning

Another view - the Bronzeback Snake

There is actually a plethora of nature and wildlife in urbanized Singapore, if you look really closely around, and of course are lucky enough!

Snakes and other wildlife usually avoid human contact if they can, and are normally harmless if you leave them alone, unprovoked.

But be warned, keep your eyes open and bodies ready when you're on the nature trail, even a highly urbanized one, and you may be in for a beautiful treat and wonderful nature experience. :)

(Photos from Yahoo & Google Images)