A hissy fit after some hissing

I am a big fan of wildlife documentaries and marvel at the fearlessness of the experts in the field whose passion moves them to risk life and limb to get to know more about the creatures they love.

What I find hard to understand is the choice of animal in some cases. There are those who like nothing better than scrambling through brush where venomous reptiles abound. As soon as a slithering serpent is found, despite its perfect camouflage, they make a beeline for it. Grasping it by the neck they then proceed to wax lyrical on its distinctive colouring, its impressive fangs and its agility and strength.

I, too, find reptiles absolutely fascinating in the sense that as soon as I see one I am transfixed to the spot and can’t take my eyes off it even as I inwardly shudder with fear. I have had my fair share of ‘encounters’ with these although I must confess that I have never been possessed by the desire to stand within striking distance.

The army life has provided me with these opportunities, living as we often did in huge bungalows with even bigger compounds filled with a variety of trees and scrub.

There was the krait that ventured into the wet coolness of a bathroom and lay there in coiled bliss only to be rudely interrupted by the man of the house. Some instinct made him look down and what he beheld made him scramble out of the room as fast as lightning.

The ensuing panic brought the whole household together and we children stared at the awesome sight. By the time we were able to tear our eyes away from it and think about a way to make it leave without causing anyone harm, it decided it had had enough of the attention and slithered away. None of us knew where it disappeared and no amount of poking the drain with sticks could flush it out. Needless to say, that room wasn’t used for some time.

Our garden held its fair share of grass and rat snakes which were allowed to roam around within those boundaries as we knew they were not poisonous.

Living in India there is no way you can escape seeing a cobra. There was a building that housed a bank in the centre of the city. One day a clerk entered the storeroom to retrieve some old files when he heard a hissing sound. He was out of that room in a flash.

The snake charmers were called in. Yes, we do have these still. And what they saw made the bank staff’s hair stand on end. There was a colony of snakes in that dark dank room. Each time I went to that bank, my eyes would dart all over the place, imagining a cobra nestled on the very ledger where my account details had been diligently entered. And, yes again, before you gasp with disbelief, this was before the era of computerisation and digital data.

There was yet another snake that I stepped on without being bitten. That’s because it had crept into the house and must have been desperate to get away as soon as it realised it had made some wrong turns somewhere. It slithered past two supine dogs and, luckily, it bit neither. It was, after all, a rodent-eating reptile and those two (an Alsatian and a Dalmatian) were too big to be mistaken for food. What I cannot understand is how the canines were oblivious of its presence. Whatever happened to their instincts as guard dogs?

As you can see, I have lived to tell my tale. I know what you’re thinking — ‘she was never in any danger anyway. It’s not as if she confronted the creatures’. But haven’t you heard of people literally dying of fright?