A colleague of mine, working in Dubai UAE for an extended period of time just emailed me that he was bitten by a snake. Luckily, it was a harmless snake, he wrote. I immediately emailed him back asking him how he could distinguish a dangerous snake from a harmless one and is there a serious problem with snakes in Dubai?

He told me that I can’t use his incident with the snake bite from joining him next week to finish the work we started for the Hotels Dubai UAE. He assured me it was his fault he was bitten. He said in the UAE the harmless snakes are long, thin and fast moving. Their heads are shaped like a bullet with a hardly visible transition from the head and body. He said that the dangerous vipers are rarely more than two-feet long and are thick and much slower than the harmless snakes. Their heads are in the shape of an arrowhead and that there is a distinctive separation from the neck to the body.

I asked him what on earth made him an expert all of a sudden? He said that it was necessary where we going when I arrive to survey the land for our companies next project. Crap, I thought, holy cow. It never crossed my mind when I took this assignment that I’d have to deal with snakes. My colleague for this amusing to say the least. He proceeded to tell me he’s done all the research about the snaked we might encounter and wrote saying we could possibly run into the Pseudocerastes Persicus (the Persian Horned Viper) which produces a neurotoxin which attacks the motor nerves and paralyses the muscles and will cause breathing and swallowing difficulties. He told me not to worry because the snake isn’t very aggressive. Then he added that I should be worried about the sand vipers, the saw-scaled vipers and the carpet viper because the venom of any of these snakes contains haemotoxins that would eliminate my blood from clotting and cause me to bleed to death.

My next email was sent to my boss asking if I could be reassigned

Related posts:

1. Herpetological Society snakes its way into MU
2. Dubai: International Business Destination
3. Dubai Quality Group and Shell launch Emirates Business Women Awards 2008
4. Dubai Sound Art
5. 'Shoot on Sight' to premier at Dubai Film Festival

Filed by Dylan at 3:12 pm under Environment
No Comments