On my last day at the Park, I was allowed to handle a cobra. I held a stick under the neck of the cobra and then lifted it by its tail. I did this about 2-3 times after which the cobra was put back in its box. I was so excited and happy. It was a perfect ending to my stay at the Snake Park.
As I write this I think about my other previous experiences with snakes. Like the story my mum tells about the time when I was only a few months old, sleeping one afternoon in my cradle at our home in Valpoi. She had heard a soft thud and to her utter horror she saw a thin bluish green snake which had obviously dropped from the roof making loops all over and around the cradle. Snakes are not unusual in the countryside and RUSTIC Farm was no exception. Mum says she was terrified but dared not make a sound for I was sleeping soundly and the cradle was covered with a mosquito net, outside of which the snake leapt around. It was less than a minute before it bounded onto the chairs and was out of the window and she rushed to reassure herself that I was safe which I very much was. From her description I know now that it was a green whip snake, a very delicate and absolutely harmless snake.
Another time as a toddler, Mum says, I was playing with some old cartons and boxes at the farm when out leapt a snake from one of them. To my parents' astonishment, instead of crying out in fear as one might expect a child to do, I promptly went on my hands and knees crawling towards it as fast as I could, reaching out and trying to catch it.
In fact, as mum tells it, I seem to have deliberately gone out of my way to befriend snakes as a child. I would be afraid of dogs, for, as I would say, they had teeth and could bite, but snakes didn't appear to have any and for that reason perhaps remained my best friends.
Field Work Notes:
Snakes
There are around 2500 species of snakes in the world. Of these, only about 15% are poisonous. The maximum number of species of poisonous snakes is found in Australia (90% of the snakes are poisonous).
238 species of snakes are found in India. Of these, 72 are poisonous. But only few can cause serious or fatal bites. For example, Pit Vipers are poisonous but rarely prove fatal to human beings. The poisonous Big Four are (1) the Cobra, (2) the Krait, (3) the Russel's Viper, and (4) the Saw-Scaled Viper. Of these the most poisonous is the common Krait. Its venom is about four times more toxic than that of the Cobra.
All sea-snakes are poisonous. The most poisonous snakes in the world include some sea-snakes which have venom 5 times more toxic than the Cobra. But sea-snakes will bite only when severely provoked and are never known to attack swimmers in water.
Snakes are cold-blooded; their eyesight is very poorly developed and they have no eyelids. They are deaf and can only respond to vibrations. They taste, feel and smell with their forked tongue. These senses are very well developed and enable them to differentiate between living and dead creatures, prey or enemy.
Some poisonous snakes inject venom into their prey, release the prey and then track it down with their tongue after the venom has done its job of killing it. The venom contains digestive enzymes that start digesting the prey from the inside.