Youth irritates cobras, lands in hospital with bite

Shyam Sundar Vattam| NT

The craze for uploading videos on poisonous snakes in social media has landed a youth in hospital.

Hitherto, there were hardly a few expert snake catchers who could help local urban bodies nab these slimy intruders. Now snake catchers have mushroomed in every village and prefixed their names with ‘Snake’ to be identified easily besides hosting videos of them catching snakes in social media.

A youth from Sirsi in Uttara Kannada district did the same and is now being treated in hospital after three cobras attacked him simultaneously. The 19- second video of the attack has gone viral in social media and has even been shared by a forest officer.

In the video, the three cobras are seen of which one jumps at the youth who is seen squatting in front of the snakes. Then he starts dancing before them and pulls the tail end of the snakes which would then try to bite him. In an act of self-defence, one of the cobras suceeds in biting him on his thigh.

The panic-stricken youth then gets up in a hurry and pulls the snake away. He then leaves the spot and it is understood that he is now under treatment for snake bite. He is said to be out of danger.

A forest officer said snakes are unpredictable and tend to get irked by the pranks of people. They are very shy and hate to be seen by others trying to disappear as fast as possible. They take shelter under old wooden almirahs or other places in houses so that they remain beyond the naked eye. But they are sure to attack and bite if they are disturbed by people which is essentially a self-defence mechanism. Snakes don’t harm anyone unless they are targeted, he added Of late, social media buffs indulge in such dangerous acts just to become popular overnight. This has cost many people their lives too, say sources.