So… a while back we were babysitting our friends puppy; a little Thai Ridgeback called Mojo. We wanted Mojo’s stay to go as smoothly as possible in the hopes that he’d be coming back one day. At the time we didn’t have a dog of our own, so babysitting a friend’s dog was a real treat for us.

One day little Mojo was out in the garden roaming around when we heard him barking at something. At first glance he seemed to investigating a seemingly empty patch of grass which made no sense. On closer inspection, and to our horror, there  was the upper end of a snake poking out of the grass.

At the time we both knew very little  about the snakes of Thailand. Horrific images of having to tell our friend their little puppy had been bitten by a dangerous snake flooded our minds. Our first priority was removing Mojo from the area, even if he didn’t want to go! Like most Thai Ridgebacks he was too stubborn to leave any creature alone that had not been thoroughly ‘investigated’ (killed).

My partner, Carly, grabbed Mojo and put him in the house. She hastily returned  with a waste paper bin to catch the snake. After a little juggling with a couple of sticks I was able to scoop up the little guy and put him into the bin for a closer look. After we’d taken a few photos I took it to a wild area behind our house to set it free.

I hurried back to the house to look at the photos and consult some reference books to try and identify the snake. Unfortunately none of the pictures in the books seemed to match the snake but at least it didn’t look like any of the venomous ones either.

I got in touch with Mr Vern Lovic from the Thailand snakes website ThailandSnakes and with his help  the snake was identified as a Common keelback which thankfully is not venomous. The Thailand snakes website has very good information on the snakes of Thailand and is definitely worth a visit if you live in Thailand.

Mojo seemed unfazed by the whole experience and was quickly back in the garden chewing on his favourite stick.