Snake Man put off by red tape

DAMON CORRIE is no longer tracking down snakes in bushy, remote areas of the island.

These days, his focus is on a more diplomatic mission - representing indigenous tribal nations across the world through his self-founded organisation, the Pan-Tribal Confederacy of Indigenous Tribal Nations, established in December, 1996. He is a descendant of the Lokono-Arawak tribe.

But his absence from the public eye isn't entirely to blame on his job.

It comes out of his own frustration with the snaking red tape and bureaucracy introduced by a task force set up by Government in June 2006, which he says has squeezed the life out of a once active hunt for a number of constrictors on the loose in Barbados.

The herpetologist, the closest Barbados has come to those heart-racing, adventure-seekers seen on the National Geographic and Discovery Channels, told the DAILY NATION he was no longer a member of the task force but would offer his assistance if it was needed.

He once led a team to Joes River, St Joseph, in the dead of the night, tracking an 18-foot Burmese Python, and has mounted similar expeditions in an effort to capture these elusive, slithering creatures that others wouldn't dare get close to. Corrie kept Barbadians informed every step of the way, quelling fear and panic since rumours of the illegal snakes first surfaced in April last year. Initially, there were reports of sightings in St Peter, St James, Christ Church and St Joseph.

Wide knowledge

His wide knowledge of reptiles and fearless approach earned him the nickname "Snake Man" by those who followed his exploits in awe. Whether his ancestry - the Arawaks were skilled hunters - had anything to do with his "right on the money" tracking ability, is anyone's guess.

But his efforts were hindered by a lack of proper equipment needed to successfully track and capture the snakes. So Corrie enlisted the help of Government - a decision that he somewhat regrets now.

For him, the thrill has gone out of the hunt. He has disconnected his cellphone which, at one point, racked up over $500 in calls from frantic callers. His private number was replaced by a 24-hour snake hotline set up by the task force which was still active when the DAILY NATION called it last week.

"The bureaucracy, I think, is the biggest problem. That is why I preferred when I was on my own because Corey [Forde], Geoffrey [Browne] and I, we would get together and within the space of two months we did over two dozen searches, but the task force has not gotten around to doing a single search yet for various reasons. They're still training and they have to get clearance from this department and that department.

"Their heart is in the right place but other things have taken precedence. World Cup is a big boost for tourism but I expect when it is all over, they will get around to the snakes. After it's over and no searches have been conducted, then you will have to ask some serious questions. But you have to give them the benefit of the doubt for now.

"The public doesn't really understand all of this and every time I go somewhere they're like: 'Why aren't you all doing anything? What's going on'?"

It was a thankless job. Corrie would get calls all hours of the day and night and while the public reported sightings, he and his team always seemed one step behind the slick snakes. His critics charged that there were no snakes, that he had led Barbadians on a wild goose chase, but his vindication came last July when a seven-foot red-tail boa constrictor was captured in Morgan Lewis, St Andrew. It was like Christmas for him.

"I had said there was a sighting of a boa constrictor six weeks before on the south-eastern side of Farley Hill. That snake was found two hills away but in the general location. Inspector Wayne Norville of the RSPCA informed me that an 11-foot Burmese Python was captured by him in 2005 so that cut it down to eight being potentially out there right now.

"Two positive things that came from that capture from my point of view were that one of the ten is accounted for and out of the public domain, and there were so many people who were chastising me and that I had cried 'wolf' and it was all in people's imaginations. I was saying to myself that a hundred different people who don't know each other can't be rumour-mongers. So there was a possibility that what they were saying was true," he said.

It reached the point where it started to consume every part of Corrie's life. Callers expected him to come running as soon as they reported a sighting. However, most of the calls were usually after the fact - the snake had long disappeared when they got the call and 90 per cent of the time, the calls were about a local reptile called the Racer Snake, a relatively harmless snake which was just showing up in areas it was never seen before.

Small snake

The Racer has a uniformed brown colour and is as wide as a finger, but the Most Wanted Snakes are much bigger - about as thick as one's arm or larger, he pointed out.

Corrie said there should be no major fear of the snakes reproducing while out in the wild since they had to be of the same species - male and female.

"They come together once a year within a one-month period when the female is in season. So the odds of that are very slim. Also, a baby python is very slow moving and easy prey - rats or monkeys would kill it. The only way you could end up getting more [snakes] out there is because there are still people who could release them out into the wild.

"I got about three calls telling me there were some guys who have an albino Burmese Python which is about ten feet long. That is a snake that was never allowed in legally so it was smuggled in as a baby," said Corrie.

"In their mind, maybe it is something cool, but if you have a pet that can kill you, in my mind it is not a pet. This same Burmese Python has strangled to death about a dozen people in the United States in the last ten years. A reptile is not like a dog, it is not going to recognise whether you're a stranger or a friend," he warned.

The most recent snake sighting was three weeks ago in Sweet Vale, St George, when a woman spotted one in her backyard while hanging out clothes. The snake escaped.

Though Corrie is kept busy in his role as president of the Pan-Tribal Confederacy of Indigenous Tribal Nations, he plans to resume his own searches "irrespective of whether the task force is ready or not".

"The public can be assured of that but we will do it after World Cup because we don't want to give visitors a false idea that there are a lot of snakes on the island," he said.