Yesterday I took a break to get some snack, as usual I went across the parking lot and backyard to take the back road to the 7/11. There were a couple office girls and a janitor talking next to a tree, they call me and say “Ale, look at this”. The janitor had caught something near the backyard gazebo in a small cage; I get closer and I see a small snake, about 60cm long coiled on a corner, the janitor pokes it with a stick and the snake rises its head, it was a bloody cobra! :eek:
After looking around a little it looked as a Burmese Spitting Cobra It was dark, shiny brown on the top and creamy white in the belly, no banding that I could see but some small dark spots in the hood.
Gee, a blip! cobra! :eek:
It surely came out of the semi swampy plot on the other side of the back road, I´ve seen many critters there, from pretty butterflies to meter plus monitor lizards, frogs and large bats, squirrels and geckos. All kinds of birds too. But a cobra? I never would had expected that.
Now there´s something a little worrying, we managed to catch a small baby cobra, so that leaves daddy cobra and mommy cobra still on the loose and probably pissed off… on the bloody patio at the back of the office. Nice.
This place makes a point of reminding me all the time that this ain´t Kansas anymore.
On one of my trips to Thailand I was staying at a beach bungalow and my neighbours were two British chaps whom I was very impressed with. They had traveled alone across Africa and had many adventures, they were very brave, in my eyes anyway.
Next morning I’m in my hammock on my porch and one of them comes out and tells me they have a snake in the bathroom of their bungalow. Now these bungalows were built in such a way that there was a sliding door and two steps down into the tiled shower/bathroom. They go back in to admire it, I go to get my partner (who isn’t all that interested it turns out), and return just in time to see them both come out of the bungalow like they’ve been shot out of a gun.
They had slid back the door to admire the large black snake, only to have it raise it’s head and body up and spread it’s cobra hoody. Holy crap! It was a very impressive snake!
The bungalow owners came and dealt with it quite handily.
Still it was a cool thing to see, very awesome. Neither the largest nor most dangerous snake I saw in my travels in Asia, but definitely a stand out!
A friend of my father’s was out East years ago. One day he went looking for his very young daughter and found her at the back of the house feeding ice cream to a cobra :eek:. Every time the cobra got too close, she bopped it on the head with her spoon!
One day, I was walking across the Chulalalongkorn University campus in Bangkok mid-day and saw a small crowd gathered around a tree. Wrapped around a lower branch was a HUGE snake. Not a cobra. It looked like some sort of python or anaconda equivalent, the squeezing kind. BIG! Some janitor or groundskeeper was breaking the limb off and trying to get the snake to let go. The snake was holding on tight for dear life.
I don’t know anything about Asian snakes, but here on the High Plains the sankes don’t have much of what one would call “family values.” Mommy and Daddy don’t stick around to teach babies anything – the just slither off to start biting and swallowing.
Cobras don’t use their hoods when hunting, do they? Isn’t that really more of a scare tactic to use against larger animals they can’t eat, or even predators? Again, I know nothing about Asian snakes, but rattlesnakes don’t rattle if they’re hunting, they only buzz only as a defense.
Yes, they do. I’ve eaten snake. It’s not something I’d go out of my way for, but it’ll do in a pinch. There are even a few stands around where you can drink a small glass of snake blood, for vitality or to increase potency or whatever, but you won’t find those in the touristy areas.
I’ll tell you, from this western Canadian’s perspective, I’ll take killing cold over all the huge bugs and poisonous spiders and snakes and hurricanes and tsunamis and earthquakes and volcanoes that the rest of the world has any day of the week. I’ll have to bookmark this thread and come read it in the dead of winter next year.
Different strokes for different folks, indeed there are many unsafe things about living here, but when i’m wetting my toes in crystal water, under the shade of a palm tree on a white sand beach, sipping a coconut shake, well, I could die happy right then and there.
Darn, I so want it to be 8th already, I’m off to Koh Phi Phi for four days then… initialze daydreaming sequence
