PALATJ — BAYER AND HARRY-ROFEN 503 



great yelps of fear whenever we caught sea snakes (or any other kind, 

 for that matter), and their repugnance extends also to eels, perhaps 

 with more justification. Another droll story, frequently seen on the 

 carved "talking picture" boards, tells how the sea snake taught 

 Palauans to fish with nets. In this tale, a Palauan woman, whose 

 children were a banana tree, a pussycat, and a sea snake, grew weary 

 of her offspring and told them to make their own way in the world. 

 The banana tree pointed out the impracticality of this suggestion, at 

 least from its rooted standpoint, and thus won a reprieve, but the two 

 more active "children" were sent packing. As they swam toward 

 Orukuizu, the cat riding on the snake's head, they grew hungry, and in 

 Palauan carvings we see the snake encircling some fishes so the cat 

 could catch them as they swam out through the narrow space between 

 the snake's head and tail. A villager who was up in a palm tree 

 gathering toddy caught sight of this procedure and at once recognized 

 its possibilities. He rushed down to the shore and asked the snake to 

 show him how to fish that way, so the snake showed him how to set 

 up a fence of sticks in shallow water, in which fish would be trapped. 

 But the Orukuizu man still needed the cat to catch the fish as they 

 passed through the mouth of the weir, so he asked the snake if he could 

 have the cat, too. The snake agreed but made the man promise to give 

 the cat one of the fish each time they made a successful catch. Such 

 was the origin of cats and fishweirs. 



This particular species of sea snake is not so completely aquatic as 

 are some of its relatives, and it could be found on the seaward shore of 

 exposed islands, coiled up in underbrush on dry land or even in the 

 branches of trees (pi. 19, fig. 2) . They were very common at Nardueis, 

 off the southeast shore of Babelthuap, where we caught as many as a 

 dozen in a couple of hours. Some of these are still living in the Stein- 

 hart Aquarium in San Francisco, but the specimens destined for the 

 National Zoological Park in Washington perished during the flight 

 across the continent. 



The herpetological collections we assembled contain at least four 

 other species of snakes, including a burrowing form {Typhlops) no 



The story of the sea snake, the cat, and the banana tree. Adapted from an actual Palaun 



carving. 



412575 — 57 83 



