WHEN SNAKES BITE...

“Maar diya sahib! Bada zehrila naag tha!”, said the gardener as he stood in front of me, flanked by four others. At the end of a long wooden stick that he held out like a bayonet hung a snake, about six feet long. Its head, once a beautiful greenish black seemed to have been crumpled out of shape and was dripping thick sticky blood.

I shook my head and picked up the now lifeless form of the serpent and pried its mouth open with a twig. I displayed the snake’s dentition for the men. Row upon row of saw-like teeth looked formidable, but then I made the point I was trying to make as I stuck the twig under the rat snake’s teeth and said, “See? no fangs! Iss saanp mein zeher nahin hota! No venom! These snakes just catch rats and bandicoots. They just give you guys a helping hand.”

The men didn’t know how to react to that. What I had just said had collided with their understanding of their world, that all snakes were dangerous, venomous and almost evil beings and the only possible outcomes of an encounter with one were either an agonizing fatal bite for man or a lethal blow from a stick for the snake. On the other hand I could see why a non venomous rat snake could so easily be mistaken for a venomous cobra or krait. So, what should one do when one encounters a snake?

For an answer to that question I had to go looking for a man who knows his snakes like the back of his hand… also because he often has one wrapped around the back of his hand.

Meet Debanik Mukherjee, a herpetologist by trade and an evolutionary biologist by passion, and a man who his friends described to me as “this crazy guy, he catches venomous with his bare hands..”. Warm, unassuming and extremely passionate about his subject, he reminded me I was late for our appointment when I showed up half an hour later than the agreed hour. But instead of making me feel awkward about it he immediately apologized for the state of his field station, dusted an old chair in the corner before offering me a seat and then politely requested an attendant to get us some tea.

A few sips of sweet tea later, I asked the question that had been bothering me. How does one differentiate between a venomous snake and a non venomous one? Debanik Mukherjee rolled his eyes and smiled. “Th at’s a tough one. Th ose with an experience of handling snakes can easily tell the differences in coloration and subtle changes in shape. For instance two of India’s relatively more common venomous snakes, the saw-scaled viper and the Russell’s viper, like most vipers, have slightly triangular heads. But it is tough for a layperson to tell the difference between a krait and a rat snake for instance, or a cobra for that matter, unless it has raised its hood.”

Then what is one to do if one encounters a snake inside one’s garden or room? Just wait for it to leave? Mukherjee laughed a wry good natured laugh and said “Carbolic acid! Keep that handy if snakes like visiting you. Carbolic acid or phenol is known to ward snakes off. I think its fumes interfere with the snake’s ability to interpret its environment through its senses. Th at, or a flame wrapped around a long stick should be enough to drive the snake off in a safe direction and distance. Remember this, that except for an aggressive species like the African black mamba, most snakes will want to avoid conflict with humans, and given an opportunity, would be happy to retreat.”

But what if one does get bitten? What are our options then? Doctor Mukherjee looked into my eyes, leaned across his table and said, “Then there is a problem. Snake venom acts fast. It gives you only hours, often only minutes, about 30 or so, if bitten by a krait for instance. So if you know nothing about snakes and are bitten by one, you must rush to the nearest hospital. Most large hospitals would have access to antivenin. In the old days, people would have to kill and carry the snake to the doctor so he could identify the snake and administer the antivenin accordingly. But today, while carrying a picture on your phone might help, you needn’t fret too much about it for modern polyvalent antivenins would cover the bases for a wide variety of snake bites.

Stay calm – More often than not, even if the victim has been bitten by a cobra or a krait, the bite would be a ‘dry bite’. This means that even though the snake did bite, it did not pump any venom into the blood stream. Venom is precious and snakes would rather not waste venom on humans who are too big to be eaten. (Unlike cobras and kraits, vipers however cannot control or restrict the amount of venom they inject in their victims)

In the rare event that one does get bitten, you must try and relax and control your breathing. Getting excited and anxious would only make the heart beat faster and this would lead to the venom reaching the organs sooner than later.

Check for fangs – Look out for deep punctures made by the venom squirting fangs at the site of the injury. If you can locate distinct puncture wounds that stand out from the rest of the bite marks, this would usually be a sign that the snake was venomous.

Tourniquets – Th ough rather popular in the past, tourniquets aren’t a very good idea, especially if tied too tight. Tourniquets would do more harm than good in such cases and could even trigger gangrene. Then Debanik revealed an interesting bit of trivia. “Mithridatization is the process of building immunity from snake bites by injecting small doses of snake venom into the human body. And crazy as it might sound, there are people all over the world who are experimenting with the idea. It works, but one small mistake could be the last one for these modern day Mithridates. So take my advice, mind your feet and stay away from snakes and snake venom if you haven’t been trained to handle them”, added Debanik.

I will take his advice, and so should you. But all that you just read might make you think that having snakes around really is a lot of trouble. Why go through this trouble and effort in order to coexist with this cold blooded killer? Well, here’s why...

Snakes, like all apex predators, are one of nature’s prime indicators of environmental well being. But if that seems too esoteric an idea for you then you should know that snakes are one of nature’s best rodent regulators. For a variety of reasons, snakes do the job better than any human pest control interventions. In fact, in parts of rural Vietnam, where snakes had been exterminated by paranoid human actions, the reptiles are being reintroduced to keep rodent populations in check. And why are rodents such bad news? Umm, where do I begin… they destroy crops worth millions, their feces and urine contaminate our food and our water, spreading diseases and death, and they are host to fleas and ticks and mites that can routinely ring in epidemics. Without snakes, our barns, yards and dinner tables would be overrun by rats. So join me as I say ‘thank god for snakes!’ And next time you run into a snake and know just what to do, come on, you could thank me too… and of course, the redoubtable Mr. Mukherjee!

A TOXIC TALE

Animal Planet is crawling with them. So is Nat Geo Wild. It’s snakes and the modern day snake charmers, herpetologists with a penchant for one way conversations – folks like Austin Stevens, Jeff Corwin, Brady Barr, the man who started it all, the late great Steve ‘Crikey’ Irwin, and of course, our home grown sweet talking snake wrangler – Gerry Martin, who seem to have taken over all the prime time slots on animal tv.

They make for wonderfully exciting viewing, I will give you that. Most folks, even those that love dogs and cats and birds, and find monkeys cute and white mice adorable, shudder at the thought of a snake slithering along their arm. Snakes inspire revulsion and reverence in equal measure. The scales, the forked tongue, the unblinking eyes and the possibility of a lethal liquid flowing through their switchblade fangs elevates them to the status of a god for a few and the very devil for the rest.

So I can understand why it is like standing barefoot on the very edge of reality tv to watch a man as mortal as you and me, literally kiss death as his lips touch the raised hood of a king cobra. These men catch mambas by their tails, taipans by the neck and play with rattling rattlers like they were a child’s toy. The tiniest scratch from any one of these snakes could lead to a painful and hideous end for these experts. Even with antivenom, the recovery process is uncertain, slow and very painful. So those men are risking a whole lot for good television. Should you try this at home? Sure, go ahead. If you’re as incredibly lucky as I once was, you will survive both the encounter and the feeling of having been monumentally stupid when the realization of how close you were to a grisly death has washed over you. And if you are not, you will be in that privileged ringside seat to the spectacle of watching the limb that suffered the hemotoxic bite disintegrate in front of your very eyes as you writhe in the kind of agony that might make getting impaled on a stake feel like a vacation. Or you could try guessing which of your organs is shutting down first as the neurotoxins motor along your arteries. Whichever the nature of the venom, it is unlikely to be a quiet death, I promise.

Here’s my story that I might have shared in bits and pieces on earlier occasions but this time I present it to you in its entirety as a prelude to ‘what to do when the naughty one from Eden comes calling’.

A few springs ago, I was walking out of my office which was then sitting pretty near the green glades of Sanjay Van near Qutab Institutional Area, when I spotted the guards crowding around a pair of flower pots. I peered over their shoulders and saw them poking at a long slim snake with sticks. More than two feet long, a deep dirty brown with bands running rings around it. Some wanted to kill it with sticks, some suggested burning it while a few where of the opinion that it should either be left alone or carried outside the premises and released.

One of the men said that he had often seen these snakes around the area. Now that got me thinking. If this snake was common in the area, it was important to know whether this snake was venomous or not and what should one do if one of these snakes just pops up around a corner. So I suggested that they put the snake, unharmed and whole, in a container so I could take it to the zoo and get it identified and find suggestions for a viable protocol if this kind of an encounter was to happen again (mobile phone cameras weren’t really de rigueur in those days and so physically carrying the snake was the only way out).

A plastic bottle was procured and the snake, still sluggish in the cool of the morning was poked and picked and placed inside the bottle. One of the guards thought the snake might find the confines of the bottle claustrophobic and punched a few holes into the cap. But now the holes seemed big enough for the snake to escape through them and so he stuck a few twigs to plug the holes. Equipped thus I stuck the bottle between the seat and the door to keep the bottle upright and drove off to the zoo. A speed breaker later, the bottle keeled over and a forked tongue flickered out of the port window in the bottle cap. If the snake got out, it would be impossible to find in the folds of the car’s insides. I had to pull over and set things right. Like I said, it was a monumentally stupid decision to transport a potentially dangerous reptile in this fasion and then to drive with this distraction through Delhi’s notoriously hostile traffic.

Anyway, we both survived the trip to the zoo where I explained my situation to the folks manning the gate and I was ushered in to reptile house. I held out the bottle with the gaping holes in the cap (the twigs had given in to gravity and had fallen through. The little snake had climbed along the length of the twigs and was now poking its head out of the bottle). The man at the reptile house shrank back in horror. “Krait! It’s a Krait”, he whispered. My hands must have started shaking involuntarily at the exclamation for the bottle vibrated in my hand and the snake dropped down again to the bottom.

A krait?! I had been cradling a krait all this while? t krait in Re first time I came across those five dreaded letters was in Rudyard Kipling’s Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, that unforgettable tale that pitted a pair of cobras against a brave and wily pet mongoose. In the story, Kipling’s krait was smaller but as venomous (as a matter of fact, ounce for ounce, krait venom is even more potent than cobra venom) and dangerous as those hooded emissaries of doom. “It is still a little chilly these days. This one got out a little too soon and that’s why you are still alive”, snapped the zoo ‘expert’. “Half an hour is all it will take for this little devil’s neurotoxins to take you to the brink of respiratory failure”, he added.

Beads of cold sweat oozed out of my pores as I stuttered, “ Ab? Now what?”. My friend from the zoo just shrugged and walked away with a “can’t keep him here…”

So there I was, standing with this genie of death in a bottle, the prospect of another drive with this speckled co-driver and a whole bunch of questions and not an answer in sight.

It has taken me a while since then but I finally have the answers I needed that day. Wait a week and you’ll have them too. And until then, take good care and don’t get bitten...