A little snake lives at West Bay, Middle Percy Island, in a beach shack known as the ‘Percy Hilton’ (see photograph). He is a little more than a metre long with a slim brown body that suggests that it is a while since he has enjoyed a lizard or a delicious little mouse. You won’t hear him as he slides among the mementoes left by a thousand visiting yachties. You might not even see him as watches and waits for a pretty girl snake to bring some love into his otherwise solitary life or unsuspecting prey to take shelter in the cool gloom of the shack.
Peter Lee (Tahaa) was the first of our band of adventurers to see the snake resting on a log set immediately under the old wooden table where only moments before I had been writing in the guest book. At first I thought he was a toy snake; the kind that festoons the Weingott’s Wilpareena II in an attempt to frighten away little nesting swallows. Clearly though he was very much alive as he cast his fine head from side to side, blinked his eye, and then slipped noiselessly away across the sandy floor to a safer place. We also made a hasty retreat but not before Peter added a token of our visit to the vast array of bric-a-brac in the shack (see photograph).
Under the shade of a palm tree , safely out of range of falling coconuts, we felt the fine sand between out toes, gazed at the clear blue water and contemplated what we would have done 60 n/miles from the mainland if one of us had been bitten.
Peter Lee (Tahaa) was the first of our band of adventurers to see the snake resting on a log set immediately under the old wooden table where only moments before I had been writing in the guest book. At first I thought he was a toy snake; the kind that festoons the Weingott’s Wilpareena II in an attempt to frighten away little nesting swallows. Clearly though he was very much alive as he cast his fine head from side to side, blinked his eye, and then slipped noiselessly away across the sandy floor to a safer place. We also made a hasty retreat but not before Peter added a token of our visit to the vast array of bric-a-brac in the shack (see photograph).
Under the shade of a palm tree , safely out of range of falling coconuts, we felt the fine sand between out toes, gazed at the clear blue water and contemplated what we would have done 60 n/miles from the mainland if one of us had been bitten.
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