Snakes

Our house was next to the GKVK forest in Bangalore. There were lot of eucalyptus trees and the forest was pretty dense. Whenever they cut down these trees, lot of snakes came out of the forest to our area. We could hear lot of snake stories. Infact, when I would come back from college, mom would have a snake story ready. That was one of the reasons, why everybody had a mesh door in front of the usual wooden door, so that they could keep that open for the air circulation.
One day, both the doors were open, and when mom came out, she saw a big, fat snake, resting under the table in our verandah. It seems my parents called the snake catcher, and with great difficulty, they got this out.

One of my neighbors had left the water sump (tank) door open to get something from inside. By the time she came back, there was snake which had fallen inside the sump. When I came back from college mom told me this, and I went to see the snake. That was probably the longest snake I had seen other than snake parks or zoo. Then they had to call people and get the snake out. They also got the whole water sump (tank) cleaned up.

I haven’t seen that many snakes as much my mom or my brother have seen. But I did encounter a snake story once. Let’s say I was just saved.

It was on a weekend, my cousin brothers had come home for lunch. Usually my elder brother is fond of pulling my leg. He kept on teasing how I would believe anything he would say when I was kid. This had gone for a couple of hours, after which I gave him a warning that I would never ever believe whatever he said. As they were about to leave, we all went outside to see them off. My cousin was near the gate and I was near the door. We have a big garden, so he just happened to see something and shouted at me to move. I dint move an inch. He again shouted saying there was a snake, and asked me to move. This time I was determined it was a prank, I dint move. My other cousin saw this and pulled me, and the green snake just jumped. It would have hit my eye, if my cousin hadn’t pulled me. We were in a shock for a few minutes, and later I kept teasing my cousin, that his pranks would have cost me my life, if not for my other cousin. Till date, we remember that incident and laugh about it now, but it was pretty scary when it actually happened.

Even today, I am not scared of seeing snakes, but if its gonna attack me, I can scream like crazy and run around like a mad woman to save myself. By God’s grace, I have never encountered a situation like that except for the instance I mentioned above.