Robin Duborget wrote:Thanks Frédéric. Have you some advices for finding an alive specimen of this species ?
I think I will search in the rough grasslands around but I'm a newbie in snake !
One of the feasible ways is to
surprise it: You see the tail, or the rear half of the animal, with its front part
being hidden behind a bush, you approach very gently & quietly, and grab it by the tail...
Or, you have the luck that a malpolon runs away from you but takes cover under a stone or something, and
you have seen where it disappeared, and the beast has no way to escape further... Lift the stone, or whatever
it is, and grab it. Your gloves on, of course... and long sleeves, if possible.
The third possibility is sheer luck, which (much to my frustration) usually occurs to utter "laypersons" - they
just come across a malpolon nicely stretched along their way, doing nothing, not fleeing, and the blessed
"idiot" makes an
in situ photo which most of us could only dream of... I've seen photos like that, with utter
envy and "bitterness"... Why them, not me (us)?! But don't count on that possibility too much, unless you are
one of the "lucky idiots" yourself... which you are, most probably, not. You're a biologist, and they (we) usually
have to do it
comme il faut, that is, the hard way...
Running after a fleeing malpolon is almost certainly a lost case - tried that only once, ending with a bleeding
elbow and a torn shirt - my best & dearest one for fieldherping... The elbow healed, but the poor shirt ended
it's lifetime on the island of Pag... And the malpolon was something like 1.5 meters... a beautiful greenish-gray
beast...