Critically Endangered
Fourth of five in the black colour theme.
This is not an exceptionally large snake, 40-60 inches long. They are endemic to St. Vincent's Island. Unfortunately many of the people there believe all snakes are venomous, so they kill them whenever they see them. There are only three snakes on St. Vincent's Island, and none of them are venomous. Also causing a threat to the snakes are feral cats and mongooses.
When I painted this I had absolutely no pictures to work from. I searched for a very long time, but the best I could find were two drawings. One was on a stamp, so obviously not very detailed. The other was meant to be more of a clipart type illustration. Just now, as I was writing up today's paintings (as I type this, I have done a total of 83, I am getting closer to being caught up!) I did a search for them again, and I found a photo of them. It is from a distance, so I couldn't see what their eyes looked like, but I was actually really pleased with how close otherwise my snake painting looked in comparison. To decide what this snake looked like I looked at all the other species of snakes in the genus Chironius and then took the short description of them being slate grey with a pale mouth and underside, and I ran with it. All the other species had relatively large eyes and very distinct scales, and I found them rather adorable. I can't tell you how excited I am to find that my painting was fairly close.