Hi all,
My first post here as I'm not so clued up on my snakes. Hopefully someone can help with an ID question. Sadly I don't have any photos so will try my best to describe what I saw and what happened.
I was hiking above the Harold Porter Botanical Gardens a couple of weeks ago and suddenly a smallish (~30-40 cm long, 2 cm wide) snake appeared trying to cross the path. I thought it looked like a blind snake as it was apparent that its eyes were very small, so, stupidly, I caught it, with some difficulty (having to pin it down) and picked it up. It wasn't happy and wriggled about, and promptly bit me on my middle finger. I grabbed it behind the head and showed it to the others in the group, but with it still writhing about I thought it best to let it go.
My immediate impression was that it had a very reduced head, with basically no 'neck', if that makes any sense. The head came quite quickly to a point. It also seemed to have quite a blunt tail. It was brown above and creamy below, with a bit of a mix of brown and cream scales at the interface. It also had very small eyes, but obviously wasn't blind. Unfortunately, not knowing much about snakes I wasn't able to take note of any scale details, as I don't know what to look for. However, it definitely didn't have the steeply sloping forehead that blind snakes seem to have.
Fortunately the bite showed virtually no symptoms, with minor inflammation immediately surrounding the area. The fangs did not penetrate the skin, although they came close, as when I pulled apart the skin, it drew a tiny speck of blood. There were fang marks in the top left and bottom right corners of where it bit me (relative to how I remember its head orientation being).
After extensive googling the only thing that fits the bill is Southern Stiletto Snake (Atractaspis bibronii). It looked a lot like the one in this thread although somewhat paler below.
viewtopic.php?f=141&t=26352&p=213763
However, it doesn't seem to occur in the Cape at all. SARCA shows no records within 100s of kms of where I was.
Could it have been something else? Or is it possible that the species does in fact occur down here?
Here's hoping you guys can provide some answers!
Seth
p.s. I realise how stupid I was. Needless to say, lesson learnt! In future I won't be picking up any snakes unless I'm doubly sure they're harmless.