[@MelonHead]
Slightly embellishing my ass, you scamp you. Suddenly manifesting my ass, you scamp you. Hypocrisy, says I! At least I have all of my character's abilities written down. Shash's greatest strength is its capability as an ambush predator. Without stealth there is no ambush, and if there is no ambush there is no predator. Higan's sensors nullify that. 180 degrees of vision as a major weakness? If Higan can't see it in the distance in front of him he just needs to turn around in a circle. He can annex the woods tree by tree. You may have expected me to conveniently let Shash reach his lair right off the bat. He clearly did not, and won't for a while, so even if you say that was the expectation the results are clearly different. 

As for its sudden trick to hide, if you knew what that was you'd laugh out of pity.