Night visitor

[Cairodel]

As the Eid holiday was on, we decided to have a couple of nights (3) out in Sinai this last weekend. On the third night, we had just finished a game of cribbage when, around 9pm, Skye darted to the edge of our awning. Seeing something move, I called her back thinking it was maybe a camel spider... Looking closer, I found this little critter.!!!

About 25cm long (seems smaller in the pic.), this sand viper was about three-quarters grown, and surprisingly unaggressive, only wanting to get away from us. I took him about a hundred metres from our camp and let him go by a palm thicket. Returning, I traced his trail, and found it had passed under SWMBO's chair, about 6 inches from her feet . That was just about the time she decided it was time to get zipped up in the tent for the night .

 

[stovie]

Cute little critter

Lethal bite???

 

[beachlover]

Didn't know they smoked. Sad comment on our times.
Seriously tho' a lovely creature, but is it nastily venomous?

 

[Cairodel]

To both questions, yes, nastily venomous and could be lethal to a childer, older peeples or somebody with rundown metabolix. As I said, this one was surprisingly non-aggressive, and I'm now having doubts (they fill up every ashtray) as to whether it was a sand viper or a saw-scaled viper . He seemed to make a hissing noise as he moved (why do I keep saying HE???), and checking out the sites, saw-scaled vipers' colouring seems to vary widely, so I would tend to go with this. In any case, yes, they are both pretty venomous, but as we didn't cause him (there I go again....) any cause for concern, he was fairly non-comittal
(I hope you appreciate the non/miss/wrong spellings.... I got OOOO levels ya know.!! )