The Day A Sea Snake Spared Me Caroline Muiruri   © Copyright 2025 by Caroline Muiruri

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

One particular afternoon, I decided to take a different path. Not sure if it was a sense of boredom with the familiar scenery, or a desire to just avoid people and lose myself to my thoughts. But something inside me urged me to take a different path. I had no reason to deviate from my usual route, no grand sense of adventure.

I took in the scenery from the new terrain. The mangroves here were the black and red mangrove. However, some had been brutally cut down. As I continued along the path, the mangroves became more isolated. The isolated red mangrove trees stood like lone sentinels in the vast land, their twisted roots emerging from the ground like fingers grasping for something unseen. There was an eerie silence in this terrain as there were no chirping birds, no rustling leaves. The only thing I could hear was the distant murmur of the ocean. I felt as if I had stepped into another world, a secret place few had ever witnessed.

The scenery was dramatically different as the ground looked desert-like. As if It was drenched in water. Slowly, my mind shifted from my thoughts, to the strange beauty around me. I wondered whether I had stepped into a delta? You know, the point where a river enters the ocean. There was a low tide that day, so I sensed that this was a place I would not have walked that easily if it was during the high tide. I quickened my steps because the ocean here has diurnal tides, and since It was in the afternoon, by evening the tides would have risen to a level that would have stranded me. I used to be quite the dare devil during my undergraduate period. Right now I don’t like being out at night, even as early as 8p.m. I prefer being indoors. But at that time, I would have taken a dive in the deep seas, or wrestled a crocodile. I am still young, but not Tarzan.

I don’t recall at exactly what time it happened, or how long I had been wandering, but after a while, something caught my eye. About three meters away, a creature slithered out from the sparse undergrowth. At first, I thought it was a lizard. Its movements were smooth yet measured, its elongated body gliding effortlessly across the sand. But then I noticed that it had no legs. Is this a…snake?

My breath was caught in my throat as my eyes traced the length of its body. It was a kind of snake that I had never seen, with black and yellow stripes. The creature had a slender frame, almost delicate. Its arrow shaped head lifted slightly, and it's dark eyes studied me with the same cautious curiosity I had for it. For a few seconds, we stared at each other, two beings caught in a moment of silent recognition. My eyes were focused on the creature’s eye. I stood there, trying to figure out what kind of snake this was. Was it harmful or harmless? Why does it have markings that are similar to that of a common, yellow and black lizard?

I wasn't afraid. Not yet. There was something strangely calm about the encounter, as if we had both stumbled into each other's worlds by accident. The snake’s head tilted slightly, as if questioning my presence, and then, as quickly as it had appeared, it turned and slipped back into the undergrowth, disappearing as if it had never been there at all.

I continued on my walk. It was just a snake, I told myself. Just another piece of nature in this vast, mysterious landscape. I shrugged off the encounter and continued my stroll, my mind already drifting to other thoughts.

It wasn’t until later that evening, as I sat with a scientist at the Kenya Marine and Wildlife Research Institute, that the gravity of my encounter struck me. I described the encounter to him. He listened intently, then reached for an old wildlife encyclopedia. As he flipped through the pages, he suddenly stopped, his finger resting on an image that made my stomach lurch. “No, it can't be. Is this what you saw?” he asked. I hesitated for a while, then I replied in a low voice, “Yes. That’s what I saw.”

The yellow-bellied sea snake.

I read the description with widening eyes. The yellow-bellied sea snake is a highly venomous species of snake that’s found in tropical waters. This snake belongs to the sub-family Hydrophiinae (sea snake). It is one of the deadliest sea snakes in the world. A single bite could lead to paralysis, respiratory failure, and death. There was no known antivenom.

My mind reeled. I had stood just a few meters from this creature, completely unaware of the danger I was in. The realization sent a chill through me. It had seen me. It could have easily killed me, yet, it looked at me and slithered away.

I tried to make sense of it. Had I simply been lucky? Had my stillness prevented it from feeling threatened? Or had it chosen to let me go? I would never know. But what I did know was that life had given me a second chance. A brush with death that I hadn’t even recognized in the moment.

That night, as I lay in my small room in Gazi, I couldn’t shake the image of the snake from my mind. Its black and yellow body, the way it had watched me, the way it had disappeared without a sound. I had walked away unscathed, but I was not the same person who had entered that strange, desolate plain. The experience had humbled me, and deepened my respect for the wild and its silent, indifferent power.

The next morning, I stuck on the same regular route that everyone uses. I wasn’t willing to tempt fate. It is interesting how nature at times reminds us just how fragile we are. And sometimes, if we’re lucky, it chooses to let us go.