Monday, November 15, 2010

Snake Stories

This is one creature I don't like. My years in rural Baling gave me lots of face-to-face experience with them, especially the poisonous viper or popularly known as ular kapak bodoh up here. We'd find snakes in our shoes, postbox, driveway.... everywhere. But that's Baling where even the centipedes were humongous! When we moved up to Alor Setar, I continued to have encounters with them, though no longer the vipers. Here it's more of the other species like the cobra and some others which I don't know their names. I dread them. I once sat with a stick at the hole from my gutter for almost 2 hours till the Bomba came cos a 6 foot cobra hid in it. It had slithered in after being hit by my friend. In the end, the fireman stuffed one end with plastic while I poured water from the upper floor. After a couple pails, he finally released the water and out came the snake, dead!

Rising water means snakes too must flee to higher grounds. And houses would be an automatic choice for them. I had my own encounter with one while I was cycling in the flood waters. A baby python came up beside me for a breather during one of my pit stops. I guess the snake and I have mutual feelings cos it disappeared just as soon as it appeared.

Then as the water was receding, my opposite neighbour found 2 in her house. One was stuck in her sliding door. She was trying to push the doors but they refused to budge. The snake slithered clumsily away as it was still cold. There were lots of cloths on the floor which she used as stoppers at the doors. She then piled them into the pail at first and then removed them again cos she thought of doing something with the cloth. Then her maid took the bucket of water into the bathroom. She went hysterical when a snake popped up as she was attempting to pour the water out of the pail. Both snakes were mid sized. We were all in stitches as she related her tale to us. But I can imagine the horror which her maid must have gone through at that time.

Another friend found a big snake under a car, all curled up, sluggish from the cold water too I presumed. She called the Bomba but it took them more than an hour to arrive. In the end she had to call in a relative to catch the snake, probably another python by the description that she gave.

For me, I'd start buying sulphur to put around my house come year end cos that's when the rains would come. When it rains, snakes too look for dry and higher grounds. I don't like them. I used to pour sulphur granules at the edge of my garden but they caused my grass there to die. So these days, I buy sulphur blocks and put them on my fences. Hopefully that's enough to deter these slimy creatures from my house.

So this flood??? It has given me so much modal to sembang and write about. The experiences are priceless!!! But that doesn't mean I want to go through it again! 8) The worries...

3 comments:

PreciousPearl said...

aiyoh, snakes are not slimy - i touched a few of them before at a serpentarium (under controlled conditions, of course :D)
but still, some people (like me) find them quite frightening if encountered in the wild :(

Dino said...

Ugggh...like me, i too am afraid of anything that slithers.

AJ7 said...

PP: I stand corrected. My boy wrapped himself in an albino python some years back and he told me that it felt dry. I've not gathered the courage to touch them. But somehow, when I think of them, I always still think of them as slimy... LOL!

Dino: We're in the same boat. But unlike you, I've had to gather courage when the safety of my kid was at stake. I never knew I would go after a snake with a stick until I had my boy. All I could think of at that time was, I must get the snake so that it does not come back and harm my boy. But despite the chases after them, they still give me the shivers.

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