h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Here I am back in Sydney after a lovely time with friends and family in England. A funny thing happened while I was there. While walking with a Philippino friend along the canal he said, "There is a snake!" I thought he was mistaken and assumed he had seen a stick or something. Sure enough in the water was a snake with a big frog in its mouth. The snake had swallowed all of one of the frog's legs and was in a difficult position of having the body of the frog and the other leg sticking out of its mouth in opposite directions. It had reached a T-junction of digestion. I'm not sure how it resolved the problem.

I often cough with a frog in my throat.

I've seen the photo. It's amazing.

I'd still love to know what sort of snake it was.

I've tried looking it up but the nearest I can find is a grass snake - which I don't think it is... but it could be as I've never seen and English snake before. I was hoping that it was an escaped python or mamba or cobra as it had, like Icy, a frog in its throat and couldn't fit another mouthful in and I was safe with my camera.

I thought it looked pretty similar to the one I came across the other week:

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-GKyLkHByIDo/Tgx5tu36QhI/AAAAAAAABDI/kmCDG72yDBY/s1600/snake+skin.jpg

Hello
Excuse me for butting into your journal, but the title wild life had me curious.
What you saw was indeed a grass snake. The grass snake diet is made up mostly of amphibians. They will take frogs, newts and fish if they can catch them. It's not often you get to witness a grass snake hunting, so you were lucky.

A grass snake makes sense, as it is the only 'snake' you could expect to find in the wild here.

They found an adder in my local nature reserve last week - the first for over 20 years.

Thanks Venus for clearing that up. I was lucky! More so than the frog.