Snakes...Yikes!!!!

Here's another one for my boys. We've had a couple of reptilian encounters lately. The other night, one of our interpreters was coming out of the bathroom and almost stepped on this...

He came running in shouting in Pashtu and finally composed himself enough to blurt out "SNAKE" in English. This is a Saw-Scale Viper (Echis carinatus). It is one of the most dangerous snakes in the world. In fact, some argue that it is THE most dangerous because of its combination of a potent venom and generally grumpy disposition. It's venom is a highly potent hemotoxin and it has a really short fuse. To tell the truth, it has short-man disease. They only get about 2 feet long at most and I guess it feels like it has something to prove. I didn't get a very good picture because I didn't want to get too close for obvious reasons.

The other snake is this one...

It's an Indian Rat Snake (Ptyas mucosa). It's essentially the Afghani version of a chicken snake. At first, we thought it might be an Asiatic cobra (Naja oxiana), but it's not. It's about 5 feet long. The Afghan guys who do security here caught it and are keeping it as a pet in a box.

Guns

This post is for Charlie. I asked him what he wanted to see about Afghanistan. Duhhhhhh...guns. Well here you go buddy.

Today, several of the Border Police came over to try out some new machine guns they got and also to train some of their newer soldiers. We were more than happy to arrange the use of our range.

This first video is of them firing the PKM. These weapons are all Russian made. They fire 7.62mm rounds. The commander is giving them a countdown before they fire..."Yo"..."Dwah"...."Drei"...which as you can probably guess is pashto for 1,2,3. I did get to shoot the PKM with them, but it's hard to shoot video and a weapon at the same time. In this video, you can hear the rounds impacting on the metal targets which were between 150 and 300 meters away.

This next video is the same guys firing the AK-47 and the AMD-65. The AMD-65 is a shortened version of the AK-47 and is made in Hungary. Both operate identically and both shoot the same round. I didn't get a chance to shoot one of these but I'm sure I will before I leave here.

More Afghan Roads

I was talking with Mom the other day and told her that it would take about 3 hours to get to Gardez which is about 30 or 40 miles away. She asked why in the world does it take so long?

Here's why....

Mom also wondered if there was anything green here. Here's a short video of us riding through a rice paddy on the way back from Gardez. You can see how bumpy the road is....and this is a good stretch.