Monday, August 4, 2008

Barbados+snake=news


Awww, the world's tiniest snake has been found, on Barbados. It was slithering beneath a rock near a patch of Barbados forest, says the AP report.

It's so little (it can curl up on a quarter) and cute - and not venomous.

Well, I always thought Barbados was snake-free, seeing as how European settlers brought in the mongoose (see photo) from India, and they ate all the snakes.

It is alternately said that the settlers brought the mongoose in to kill the rats that were invading the sugar cane, but unfortunately, things did not work out as planned - the mongoose sleeps by night and the rat, well, it eats by night - and that the mongoose was brought in to kill the snakes (which is what I've always heard).
Just think how those rotten Europeans came along and de-forested all of Barbados, ruining it for everyone ("everyone" in that case being the Caribs, who were wiped out through slavery and disease - the tribe is described here as "ruthless cannibals")!

Anyway, I can just barely remember a mongoose that was terrorizing baby goats at the house in which my mother had an apartment, just before we came to the U.S.

According to a Barbados info site, found here, a fun fact is that a mongoose never crosses the road unless someone is watching ...

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well, if they'd gotten organized to do this job while St.Pat was still around, ...

Gillian Swart said...

yes, I was going to say something along those lines ... a lot fewer complications ...