On the 13th of May my neighbors phoned me – quite like the pizza delivery boy –  shouting through the receiver that I needed to come rightaway and catch a snake from their house.

The snake turned out to be the biggest bronze back tree snake I’d ever seen and although it was not more than a meter long, it still scared me a little. Yeah I’ve caught snakes over three meters in length. But there’s something uncanny about a specimen that exceeds by very much its average size. Wouldn’t you feel anxious if you saw a mosquito the size of your thumb?

The giant bronze back behaved very well though and so I managed catching the snake quite easily. While I guided the snake into the bag, however, I noticed lumps at regular intervals on its underbelly. I guessed that it was a female about to lay eggs, so I decided to hold onto the snake a couple of days. On the 15th of May the snake laid a clutch of fourteen cream colored rectangular eggs.

I released the mother immediately (they do not participate in the hatching of their eggs). The eggs I kept in a plastic cheese container in my room. I buried them half in sand and sprayed their exposed tops regularly with water.

By the beginning of July I’d almost given up on them hatching (bronze back eggs usually hatch in six weeks at the most). Still the eggs looked healthy, full, and they hadn’t been attacked by fungus. I decided to leave them a few days more.

On the 15th of July – exactly two months later – the first baby ripped its egg shell with its especial egg tooth and poked its head out. It spent the entire day absorbing the surroundings with its large bulging froggy eyes while its belly continued to absorb the last remaining part of its yolk sac (its only food during the two months it spent in the shell). On the 16th it was dashing around in the container, over the peering heads of three more eggs that had begun to hatch.

I picked up the little fellow (or was it a felly?) and took him out in the garden to photograph. While I was doing so, the little tyke bit me thrice! I’ve rescued dozens of bronze back tree snakes from people’s houses and never ever been bitten while doing so. Isn’t it a crying shame I should get bitten thrice by one that was barely learning how to open its mouth? After the photography session I dropped him in a lush patch of our garden. He disappeared in seconds.

By the 18th only three eggs remained to hatch. They never did. The photographs I’m including in this newsletter illustrate my wonderful experience with eleven baby bronze backs that bit the hand that fed.