Sea snakes are, in animal form, the feeling the deep end of the pool gives you when you are a child, when suddenly you feel you are swimming at night, or when you are in bed but not totally sure the floor beneath hasn’t turned into water and sharks. And because sea snakes aren’t where they’re meant to be – everything you know tells you snakes don’t belong in the sea – the more you learn about them, the more you encounter all that you don’t know: the words are weird, you understand their meaning but can’t read their letters, they are words in a dream – or was it a nightmare?
Black-banded sea kraits, a type of sea snake, hunt with yellow goatfish; in New Caledonia, they are called “stripy sweaters”. Kraits are “elapid”, which means their fangs are always erect. Sea snake lungs are almost as long as their bodies; they can breathe through their skin. Their tongues are shorter than those of land snakes: only the forked part pokes out.
They have paddle-shaped tails, because they ended up in the sea when someone absentmindedly fed the end of a snake through a pasta machine before realising their mistake, grinding the serpent back out and flinging it into the water.
Watching sea snakes swim through salty water like spaghetti, or scialatielli, or string confetti, is soothing, until you remember they are real. Not for a second do they look real: they look like something generated by a sleep app. There are too many of them, for a start. So, one moment you are swimming in a sea cave and the next, several party blowers are being pointed at you, the thick paper streamers inflating, unfurling in slow motion, getting closer, unfortunately not furling back, not getting further away, multiplying, your scream a strained squeak – and when will you wake up?
Kraits eat eels, swallowing them whole, a paper garland eating the pop-out snake from a joke tin of Pringles, a party shop come to life, only you can’t find the balloons and you’re going to be late – and is that your fantastic grandmother behind the till? She will tell you where the balloons are. Go to her. But you can’t get down the aisle and now you’ve stepped on something. It’s a sea snake. Why is there a sea snake here? Don’t they belong in the sea? Am I going to die?
You’re not going to die, but you are turning into a sea snake. Your eyes have never quite adapted, your short tongue isn’t great at smelling through water, so you glide through the ocean, flying, your surroundings dark, your senses mingled, like someone perpetually falling, falling into sleep.
• Helen Sullivan is a Guardian journalist. Her first book, a memoir called Freak of Nature, will be published in 2024
• Have an animal, insect or other subject you feel is worthy of appearing in this very serious column? Email helen.sullivan@theguardian.com
