Bali tourists warned after deadly discovery in pool
You might want to check the water before you jump in.
Travellers in Bali have been urged to take care following one man's deadly backyard pool discovery. "Just a warning to many that aren't used to the 'rainy season'. Found this bad boy in my pool this morning," expat Mark Stahly posted online after catching a krait, one of Asia's most venomous snakes.
Speaking to Yahoo News Australia, Stahly referred to the incident as a surprisingly regular event. "The [cleaning] staff see snakes of one flavour or another every couple of months," he said, confirming he'd released the animal back into the wild.
"All our snakes tend to look for dryer land outside of their normal habitat in the rice fields and jungles," the Brit explained.
"I'm convinced it's a Malayan krait," Dane Trembath from the Australian Museum told Yahoo of the white and black banded reptile. "Unfortunately you can't actually see everything we need to totally confirm it but my best guess would be a Malayan krait," he said. While "just a juvenile", this classification puts the creature in the same family as our red-bellied black snake, making it "dangerously venomous to humans".
"Kraits are an elapidae, like all the Australian venomous snakes, so they have fixed front fangs," Trembath explained. "The species is nocturnal and they mostly come out at night and they mostly slither around in the leaf litter. They also eat a lot of interesting stuff, including other snakes."
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Trembath confirmed these reptiles are known for seeking shelter during the wet season. "Snakes have this thing where they tend to move on rainy nights," he explained. "So kraits eat lots of snakes and I suspect on this warm rainy night, this krait has just gone for a slither and it's fallen into the pool. Luckily they've got it out and they've let it go."
Growing up to 1.6 metres in length, the Malayan krait can be found all through southeast Asia including Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia, Sumatra, Java and Bali. Anyone who comes across one is urged to give it a wide berth.
"We give this advice to all people with any snakes," Trembath said. "If you see a snake and you don't know what it is, just walk the other way and it will usually get on its way. If it's in your house, there's lots of people available that you can call who can safely relocate the snake for you."
Dozens of travellers have since responded to Stahly's post, with many sharing their own experiences with kraits and other snakes at the tourist hotspot. "We found the large ones in Bali, 1.92 metres long, hiding in a stack of roofing shingles," one man wrote.
"I found a cobra in my house recently. Defo change in weather is moving them around," while someone else said, "I lived near a rice field. Never again. Two cobras in the pool. Two in the open living area, plus various frogs, lizards, spiders and other creatures."
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