Have you ever had a moment that you would think of as being a “Steve Irwin“-like feeling. Well, today I did…

I like to cycle a lot, especially in the Veluwe-area. There are all kinds of animals on the Veluwe that live there in the wild, like deers, wild hogs, foxes, (semi) wild horses and adders (snake). Until today, i had only seen all the animals just listed, except for the adder. I knew there would be a time where I would see one for real, but I didn’t expect that moment would be on a rainy day like today.

First I cycled passed the thing (almost driving over it, thinking it was a piece of wood from a tree), not realizing it was a snake at all, but after 10 meters passed the snake my subconscious started flirting with me and I turned around to check it out. It was a snake, definitely, and blood started pumping through my vains (I just climbed a hill anyway). Of course I didn’t try to grab the snake by it’s tail (well, not instantly like Steve would do:)), but I managed to think of filming the moment where the little snake crossed the road, which you can see here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ETuHRzhJzg

The thing that amazed me most was that the snake seemed not shy at all. You would expect the snake to avoid me (I would assume, for it’s own protection), but it didn’t. That’s probably because this was still a little snake. My question to you is: did I really stumble upon an Adder (Vipera berus), or was it some other non venomous snake? Whatever snake it was, for me it was like a Steve Irwin Feeling© .

Update: I received word from someone that it looks more like a “Hazelworm” (slow-worm, or Anguis fragilis) then an Adder. It still doesn’t change anything to the ‘Steve Irwin feeling’ I’ve had, though now I should know better when I’m dealing with this particular lizzard, or not.