|
Dorothee
Germany
|
Now that I’m on vacation I of course have a little more time for one of my hobbies – watching documentary movies like this episode of Crocodile Hunter concerning the ten deadliest snakes, “Snakes vs. Spiders”, “The Snake That Killed Cleopatra”, Austin Stevens Almost Lost His Life Three Times”, “Wildlife in Contact”, “Wunder der Evolution – Gift” (Miracle of Evolution – Venom), “Sieben Schlangen – Sieben Bisse” (Seven Snakes – Seven Bites), “Die Schlangeninsel” (The Snake’s Island)...and I’d like to share with you what I’ve learned from them.
1) If you think about buying a house, you should avoid buying one of these houses where there is a gap between the floor of the house and the ground due to some pillars. This form of construction may be very popular in some countries, but snakes use places like these to sleep and since snakes are to be found almost worldwide this can be very dangerous.
2) If you own an old warehouse or even just a cellar or a garage that contains anything that could possibly attract mice or rats – especially if you live in an area where poisonous snakes already have been seen – you should be very careful whenever you lift something up. Both snakes and rats can enter even very small holes and accidents already happened when people freaked out after the snake simply showed them that she wanted to be left alone…
3) If you find a snake in a building – in natural areas it should be clear that you should just move slowly away if you are threatened by a snake – you shouldn’t try to grab her by her head. Actually you shouldn’t try to grab her at all, but if you do, please stay away from her neck. This could hurt her as soon as she tries to move and then the snake could get very angry. As a matter of fact I saw one of these snakes spitting venom at the snake expert of one of these shows and if it hadn’t been for his glasses he’d probably be blind now. Surprisingly the snakes they showed in these movies reacted rather relaxed when they got picked up by the tail. This way the snake could maintain contact with the floor by keeping her head down and this gave her a feeling of security and it calmed her. However as I mentioned before, I’d rather call somebody from a zoo, a pet shop or an animal shelter than trying to deal with this snake by myself. This may take a few minutes, but you can be sure that you’re alive and healthy afterwards.
4) No matter the circumstances: If you are threatened by a snake, please don’t threaten back. I’m not saying this because of the many endangered snakes who already got killed out of “self-defense” – even though it wasn’t real self-defense since these people could have avoided this. No, I’m talking about the many people who thought they had to “scare this thing off” by puking it or by throwing things at it. The thing is that the snake doesn’t understand. You’re telling her to go, she’s telling you to go and after a while the animal will snap, because it tries to defend itself. So please try to avoid any close contact with this animal.
5) If you help in a harvest – especially if you help by hand, i.e. without too much technology involved – watch out where you put your hands. Any form of fruit or corn attracts mice and in addition they often use fields as nests for raising their babies. However these mice also attract snakes and they can be invisible. For one of these documentaries they interviewed a Sri Lankan man who said that in the field where he has worked for many years 67 men already got bitten. With their hands full of harvest people of course can’t look down to the floor and due to a lack of money – never walk barefoot in a field if you can afford shoes! – they don’t wear anything that could cover their feet. This sure is a risk, but the fact that they are carrying huge masses of straw around while gathering corn is even worse. It seems that many of these accidents happened when people didn’t notice that between all the straw and corn they just picked up there also was a snake ready to attack because she felt disturbed. Of course people don’t hear her hissing her threats either – another disadvantage that could be avoided – due to the noise these people make themselves by shouting commands, chatting etc.
6) Especially very young children shouldn’t be allowed to play alone outside. I’ve heard multiple stories about children that got bitten by snakes. The oldest of these stories dates back to the early 19th century and the latest took place only a few decades ago. Many specimens of snake play dead when they feel threatened and – strange as this may sound to an adult – this encourages some children to touch it. In one of these documentaries they said so considering cases the makers of this movy were familiar with and the boy from this case that took place “only a few decades ago” was the same.
7) Don’t encourage shows that include snakes. For example one of these documentary movies contained video footage from Sri Lanka. As it seems some extremely poor people had the idea of collecting wild monkeys and snakes and made them do stupid tricks. Some of these things even seemed to be animal torturing like when they took away the baby from one of these monkeys and refused to give it back until she would perform the required trick or the fact that these snakes showed clear signs of stress. It may sound cruel, since these people were extremely poor, but please don’t pay them for shows like these. By paying them, you’ll neither help the animal nor its owners. The aims they get for shows like this aren’t eough to free them from poverty, let alone offer their “pets” a species-appropriate life. In addition they will be doomed if their monkey dies or runs away and they can’t find another one. No, this isn’t a solution at all to help poor people.
8) In the documentary movy “Siberiens Amur Leoparden” (Siberia’s Amur Leopards) – see also: “http://www.englishbaby.com/findfriends/view_photo/559764” – they proved how destruction of a predators environment can affect his behavior. This video contains footage from which we can see that serious damage of an environmental area made its habitants, these leopards loose fear towards men and towards each other. In a book that was written only a few years ago it says how hard it was to catch or even just see one of these big cats. Now they showed footage depicting amur leopards entering farms and killing animals including even a dog. They showed footage concerning a leopard stealing food from another one and by doing so putting her own life as well as the life of her young one into great danger. One female even went so far as to abandon her own child. She didn’t care about it any more and – worse – she reacted aggresive when it tried to eat from her prey. Sure these are mammals and snakes are reptiles, but still both are predators. In one of these documentaries they showed how snakes adopted the city life, because there they meanwhile found better conditions – lots of rats, waste to hide underneath etcs. – than in the natural environment that may still surround this city, but looses more and more room to an expanding human population.
9) If you got bitten, don’t try to suck out the venom. Firstly you could accidentally swallow some of it and secondly this could give you a false feeling of security. If you aren’t a true expert you may not know how dangerous the snake that bit you was…and there are snakes of which the venom is so effective that just sucking it out won’t help. Better try to see a doctor as soon as possible and till then keep your arm /foot that got bitten as calm as possible. Maybe you should even tie something around this part of your body to shut down blood circulation till you can see the doctor.
10) There are deadly water snakes – venomenous ones as well as snakes that kill their victim by choking it. So in some countries wading in a river or creek almost means risking your life.
|
