What to do if you see a Gaboon viper: DNR officials say you should not approach it. Dial 911. If the snake heads north, you go south.
Gaboon viper facts:
Their fangs are some two inches, the longest fangs of any venomous snake.
They stretch four to seven feet long and weigh 18 to 25 pounds. They use their heavy weight to help them strike prey.
They eat a variety of foods, including frogs, lizards and rodents.
Solitary animals, they only come together for breeding
Ambush predators, they use cryptic colors to hide in leaf litter.
Source: Zoo Atlanta
The woman had a photo of a snake. She snapped it on her cell phone. It was a scary-looking thing, so she took the image to the experts, the folks at the Macon office of the state Department of Natural Resources.
“I’d like somebody to identify this snake,” she said, flipping open her phone. “It looks pretty mean.”
A DNR officer looked. He noted the snake’s body, as thick as a weight-lifter’s arm. He took a close look at its distinct markings, a series of white-and-dark splotches. He looked a second time, probably a third.
“I think,” he said, “that’s a Gaboon viper.”
He may as well have said a fire-breathing dragon was stalking the woods of Baldwin County, some 100 miles southeast of Atlanta. Since DNR officials ID'ed the mean-looking creature as one of the world's most-venomous snakes, people around here have been stepping carefully. After all, there are lots of places where Bitis gabonica can hide.
And if he gets hold of you…
“We classify this snake as ‘inherently dangerous,’” said Stephen Adams, a major in DNR’s wildlife resources division.
So someone who tried to grab this thing would be inherently foolish? Adams laughed.
“Your words, not mine,” he said. “But, yeah.”
Now that you’re sufficiently creeped out, let’s back up a couple of weeks. On July 22, Milledgeville resident Lora Brown visited DNR offices. She’d been visiting relatives a couple of days earlier, Brown said, when she saw a strange-looking snake crossing the road near an intersection not far from downtown Milledgeville. She stopped her car, Brown said. She stepped out. She reached for her cell phone.
Click.
And life in these parts, for a while at least, changed.
Take aim
A hot wind rattled the leaves in a white oak shading Janice Howard. She sat in a plastic chair outside a singlewide mobile home Monday afternoon, not 100 yards from a cemetery where the snake is reported to have vanished.
She hasn’t seen the snake, said Howard — hasn’t gone looking for it, either.
“At first, we were all kind of scared,” said Howard. “But as the days have gone by, he ain’t popped up.”
Dianne Williams, also sitting outside, nodded. “I ain’t seen no snake,” she said. “Ain’t but one woman seen that snake.”
"Yes," said Howard. "If I see a snake, everybody's going to know it."
Richard Saulsbury recalls the evening word got out that something wicked his way had crawled.
“I saw these flashing lights,” said Saulsbury, whose brick home is opposite the cemetery. “Then I looked out my door and saw these sheriff’s cars.”
That’s when he got a quick lesson in the Gaboon viper. “If I see him stretched out in my yard,” Saulsbury said, “I’m going to shoot him.”
The good news about the Gaboon viper: It’s not a fast-moving snake; a motivated human being could leave it in the dust. The bad news: A slow human runs a chance of dying within 15 minutes if an antidote isn’t administered. The snake - with its lethal two-inch fangs - hails from the savannas and rain forests of sub-Saharan Africa.
Because these animals are potentially lethal, it’s not easy to get a Gaboon viper. A collector must secure an exotic-animal permit from state and federal officials; must have liability insurance ($40,000 per snake); provide proof that the viper’s environment is secure; and more.
Because of those restrictions, only Zoo Atlanta and a snake-education specialist near Griffin have permits for Gaboon vipers, said Wayne Hubbard, who oversees DNR’s special-permits division. That accounts for four.
Georgia, he said, is home to tigers, Komodo dragons, buffalo and just about every other wild creature from around the world.
Snakes? “Oh yeah,” he said. “Every snake you can think of.”
Could there be a Gaboon viper that escaped from an illegal collector?
“You can hide them,” he said. “There could be one out there.”
That brings us back to the side of the road where a snake may, or may not, have crawled into the kudzu of Baldwin County. The cops have determined that the photo wasn’t taken off the Internet, so it could be a legitimate image.
They’re making morning and evening patrols near the cemetery, looking for a crawler as fat as a weight-lifter’s arm. They’re also staying out of the woods.
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