The black beetle is the messenger of death to find out how many persons there are in a house; if it comes down on three taps from an ikle broom its intentions are evil; it is seldom killed, but wrapt in a piece of white cloth and thrown away or kept in a corner.
The presence of fire flies in a house indicate that it will be broken into or deserted; if one alights on a person, some loss will ensue; if it is picked up, anything then wished for will be fulfilled; the fireflies had refused to give light to one in need of it in a previous existence; their bite requires “the mud of the deep sea and the stars of the sky for a cure”—a cryptic way of saying “salt from the sea and gum from the eye.”
A crocodile makes lumps of clay to while away the time; it throws up its prey as it carries it away and catches it with its mouth; its female becomes pregnant at the sound of thunder without any cohabitation; at certain times of the year the crocodile’s mouth is shut fast; whenever its mouth opens, its eyes close.
The flesh of the iguana is nutritious and never disagrees. The kabaragoya is requisitioned to make a deadly and leprosy-begetting poison which is injected into the veins of a betel leaf and given to an enemy to chew; three of these reptiles are tied to the three stones in a fireplace facing each other with a fourth suspended over them; a pot is placed in the centre into which they pour out their venom as they get heated.
The blood-sucker indicates by the upward motion of its head that girls should be unearthed, and by the downward motion that its inveterate tormentors the boys should be buried. Chameleons embody the spirits of women who have died in parturition.
The cry of frogs is a sign that rain is impending and the fluid they eject is poisonous; if frogs that infest a house be removed to any distance, they always come back; a person becomes lean if a tree-frog jumps on him.
A python swallows a deer whole and then goes between the trunks of two trees growing near each other to crush the bones of its prey; its oil cures any bad cut or wound.
Venomous reptiles are hung up after they are killed or are burnt.
The cobra is held sacred and rarely killed; when caught it is enclosed in a mat bag with some boiled rice and floated on a river or stream; a person killing a cobra dies or suffers some misfortune within seven days. Some cobras have a gem in their throats which they keep out to entice insects; they kill themselves if this be taken from them which can be done by getting on to a tree and throwing cowdung over the gem. Cobras are fond of sandal wood and the sweet smelling flowers of the screw pine, and are attracted by music. Their bite is fatal on Sundays. Martynia diandra (nâgadarana) protects a man from the bite of the cobra.
There are seven varieties of vipers; of these the bite of the nidi polangâ causes a deep sleep, and of the le polangâ a discharge of blood. When her skin is distended with offspring, the female viper expires and the young make their escape out of the decomposing body.