They Called me a hero!

I was chilling out last night at my warm and cozy bedroom reading some stuff for my upcoming exam. I got a phone call from my cousin. "Hey Sandy please rush to our place! We just saw a snake in our prayer room! Dad says it looks poisonous". It was already 11pm in the night. I grabbed my torchlight and rushed to their house which is five minutes away from my home. Well my medical background always makes me ask the history! So I asked them - how do you know the snake is in the prayer room? Everybody pounced on me and said "we were watching our favorite soap on TV and our main door was open. We saw it quickly entering the room through the main door. I knew it was Common Krait. Did I tell you it was raining very heavily? Common kraits are known to enter the house when the door is open. It cant climb heights or come through the window. Uncle was right in telling it looked poisonous.
It is a neurotoxic snake which enters house for warmth inside kacha house and is comfortable under mats where people sleep. When people turn around in their sleep, it gets hurt and bites injecting venom. The worst part of Krait Bite is it produces local anaesthasia at bite site and person at sleep will not know about bite. Since it is a neurotoxic, person is found unconscious or dead next morning. Moral of whole story is DONOT SLEEP ON FLOOR WITH MAT where Kraits are common. Rather sleep on COT to avoid it. But it is practically difficult among poor people in rural India where they donot even have a pacca house! I entered the room cautiosly. I saw it moving around in the Pooja room. I soon remembered the words of my tutor. I used a long pipe and a gunny bag tied to its end and moved the pipe close to it. It entered the pipe from one end and reached the gunny bag on the other end. Once I made sure it was inside the gunny bag I tied the mouth of the bag and put in my uncle's mahindra jeep and left it on to the near by balikanna forest!! I bid good bye to the scared snake. It was scared looking at so many huge men, and noices and vibration.
Well when I got back I was all praises! They called me a hero!! It is just the knowledge and presence of mind made it easy for me to handle this! When I got back home it was 2 am and I was wondering that this was such a coincidence because I had just started this blog and I had an incident to share. But unfortunately I had no time or the presence if mind to click pictures to show you guys!

Why are you scared of snakes?

We do not know about snakes.All we know is the bundle of unfolded beliefs inculcated in us from childhood and handed down from generation to generation as myths,superstitions,grandma tales, folklore and so on. First of all 80% of the snakes in rural India are non poisonous.Among the snake bites, poisonous bite are rear. fatality from a poisonous snake bite is also uncommon because around 50% of poisonous snake bites are dry bites or minimally venoumated bites. Okay..Now we shall consider venom of the snake.It is not targeted toward humans.The sole purpose of the snake in its life is not to bite humans. Venom is a glandular secretion developed over years in the snake to catch its prey and to digest it.Snakes bite humans only when it is attacked or injured.Remember it is we "homosapiens" the brainiest of all the species have invaded its space, built multistoried houses and buildings, cut down trees and left the snakes homeless. Poor thing!! Where else can it go? It has been in the planet earth much earlier than the humans evolved. Researchs say around 135 millions

years ahead of us!
It comes around humans during rainyseason and winter for warmth, or in search of rodents-their prey, or water. But why are we scared?
Mr Vijayraghavan rightly tells us in his book SNAKE BITE:A BOOK FOR INDIA the reason for the fright! I shall quote it as it is from his book-From the earliest times of the human race the snake had evoked a profound
sense of wonder,even reverence, and unspeakable fear in us.Its custom of silently appearing all on a sudden in unexpected places and disappearing equally suddenly and its ability to move in great speed despite being
limbless,its unblinking hypnotic stare,its forked tongue moving back and forth menacingly,its ability to hear inspite of having no earholes, its ability to swallow whole animals larger than itself,its ability to shed its skin entire periodically and emerging as it were a new life everytime,its presence of all manner of terrains in earth,under the soil,on high mountains,on trees,in lakes, rivvers and oceans and in all kinds of climate,its ability to go without food for months together,its psychosexual body imagery..
What we find too awesome and spine chilling about the snake is its capability to deliver death with a single strike.While most other animals kill their enemy with a lot of horrible voilence and blood shedding, the snake does that with speed ,effortless and neat!!

So take home point for today is- Yes! we are scared of snakes.But we need not. I shall in the subsequent posts try and share my views and numerous stories in my hospital about snake bite.