30 more traps
set on Big Isle

A resident reported observing
a snake near Kailua-Kona

KAILUA-KONA » State officials have deployed 40 traps to catch a snake spotted Thursday, north of Kailua-Kona.

The number of traps is a dramatic increase over the 10 set out Friday.

A resident in the Kona Palisades subdivision uphill from the Kona airport reported seeing a 3-foot brown snake on a bush in a vacant lot.

Although the brown tree snake has done extensive ecological damage on Guam, officials here warned people not to assume that the Kona snake is the same species merely because it is brown.

A team of searchers from the Departments of Agriculture and Land and Natural Resources, trained on Guam to deal with the brown tree snake, are in the Palisades area, said Domingo Cravalho, of the state Department of Agriculture.

The team draws rings with a radius of about 165 feet around the area where the snake was first seen. That is about the limit a foraging brown tree snake moves during nighttime, he said.

Each day, searchers draw a new ring, 165 feet wider than the previous one, to guide their search, he said.

The traps used are about 2 feet long, with a door that the snake can enter but not exit, he said.

Although brown tree snakes can grow up to 8 feet long, they have no trouble getting into the trap, Cravalho said. On Guam, 5-foot snakes have been removed from 2-foot traps.

Inside the trap, a mouse is placed as bait, protected by a smaller cage, Cravalho said. The mouse has food and a piece of potato for liquid.

The field searchers are planning to conduct a formal interview with the person who spotted the snake, Cravalho said. The interview has set questions designed to be neutral and to avoid suggesting answers, he said. Only at the end of the interview is the witness shown pictures of various snakes, which might include the one seen.

Some people have suggested that the snake will be killed by mongooses. But Cravalho said so many generations of mongooses have been born in Hawaii since the animal was brought from India in the 1880s that they might not recognize a snake as an enemy. Also, the mongoose is active during the day, and the brown tree snake is active at night.