Hiss Highness: The snakes of Agumbe

My heart was beating hard, my hands had goosebumps, and my feet were icy cold. The snout of a male king cobra was stuffed in a transparent PVC pipe but I could hear its growling hiss and that was making me really anxious.

This was the first time I was just a foot away from a snake, and it happened to be the world’s longest venomous snake: the king cobra.

I was assisting Ajay Giri, field director for the Agumbe Rainforest Research Station (ARRS) in Shivamogga district, Karnataka. I have volunteered under Ajay several times since 2014, the most recent being last week. Thanks to these stints, I had seen king cobras from a distance many times but never so close.

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After catching the king cobra, Ajay inserted a Passive Integrated Transponder (PIT) tag under the skin of the snake’s tail. PIT is a tagging device, to mark and monitor animals. A scan indicated that this was a ‘new’ snake, yet to be tagged.

Ajay needed six people to assist in rescuing a 12-foot king cobra from a house in Bidarkona near Agumbe. It is a village nestled in the Western Ghats in Karnataka, and has the highest number of king cobras in south India. He had five interns and was short of a hand. I volunteered.

Naagini on TV

Forty-five minutes earlier, Ajay had received a call from Panduranga Hegde (name changed), who had spotted the snake in the gap between the wall and tiled roof of his hall at Bidarkona.

Ajay picked up his rescue kit. It comprises a huge bag, PVC pipes of various sizes, a hook, and a head torch. We headed towards the temple town of Sringeri. A 12 km ride in a jeep on a zig-zag road took us to Panduranga’s house.

The women of the house were watching the serial ‘Naagini-2’ on their TV in the same 8X10 ft hall where they had spotted the king cobra. Naagini means female cobra in Kannada.

The family had asked a nine-year-old boy to keep an eye on the snake, which had not moved an inch for an hour and a half. They were in no mood to miss the TV episode!

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“Ajay anna, we have kept the volume of our TV on mute to avoid the snake from getting ‘provoked’ by the background music,” said an elderly woman. Ajay was amused. He told her snakes have no ears.

Ajay did a quick recce of the house to look for rat snakes and cobras. King cobras are called so because they primarily feed on snakes, including cobras, and they often stray into residential spaces while hunting for them, informs Ajay.

As he looked around the house, we were asked to prepare a ‘bag’. We attached the cotton bag to a PVC pipe and placed it at the main door of the house. After making sure there were no other snakes in the house, Ajay asked the family to stay out for two minutes so that the snake could be bagged.

Switching on his head torch, he lightly lifted the snake’s midriff with a hook, pulled it down, and gently walked towards the bag. The snake, presuming the bag to be a safe hiding place, slid in without any resistance. Ajay guided the snake to the bag like a mother putting her child to bed. And before the commercials on TV ended, the snake was secured.

The real work began after the bagging. Ajay scanned it to see if it is a recaptured snake, that is, if it was already logged in his database. It wasn’t. We had to tag it.

Zero showmanship

Unlike the showmen in the snake-handling business, Ajay goes about his business quietly. He never underestimates any snake and treats each — venomous or non-venomous — with equal care. His rescue methods are such that they hardly provoke or push the snake into a defensive mode.

In recent years, snake handling has become an ‘adventure sport’. Several amateurs with no understanding of snakes try to catch them and end up being bitten. Their desire for fame on social media has caused accidents that also harm others. Ajay never handles a snake without safety gear. And he never treats a rescued snake as a ‘trophy’.

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By the time we returned to the ARRS base, we were exhausted. The sun was setting, and we began chatting over filter coffee.

A female slides in

Ajay and I had sighted eight king cobras in a day in April last year. I recollected how tough it had been to convince a house owner not to disturb a female cobra taking shelter in his bathroom.

Shankaranarayana Bhat of Tirthahalli’s Ramakrishnapura made only one point to Ajay: drive the cobra out of his house. Ajay tried to convince Bhat that capturing the snake would not solve his problem as it was the breeding season and males would enter the house, tracking the scent of the female, even if the female is displaced.

The argument had continued for 25 minutes when I heard a rustling sound in the haystack. Ajay was right. A 12-foot king cobra was making its way towards the bathroom. Shankaranarayana fell silent and Ajay smiled and told him there might be more coming.

On the battlefield

Over the next three days, five male king cobras followed the same track. We eventually witnessed three combats, one of which lasted about 45 minutes. Usually, king cobras don’t bite the ‘opponent’. All they try to do is to press the hood of the opponent hard to the ground to show their strength. During one such ferocious fight, a ‘loser’ king cobra quit the battlefield and fled at lightning speed past my leg as I stood clicking pictures from what I assumed was a safe distance.

Finally, on the third day, the ‘winner’ and the female king cobra moved into the forest on their own. But before that, he gathered all the villagers, allayed their fears, and busted several snake myths. Many believe snakes remember their enemies for 12 years and take revenge. Stories also promote the idea that the cobra has a precious gem on the hood, drinks milk, and can transform into a human. The most common belief is that cobras can dance to tunes played on the ‘pungi’ pipe by snake charmers.

In reality, snakes aren’t particularly good at remembering those who have harmed it or their partners. They don’t drink milk as they can’t digest it. Also, snakes have no ears; they just respond in reflex to the snake charmer’s movements.

Across the world, humans are in conflict with snakes. Thousands of people in India die of snake bites, especially from cobras and vipers that come in search of food — rats and frogs that breed close to human habitations.

Big 3 in check

Ophiophagus hannah is the scientific name for the king cobra. Derived from a Greek word, Ophiophagus means snake-eating. And so, king cobras play a big role in the ecologically sensitive Western Ghats, which is home to over 43 species of snakes.

Being predators, they keep the population of the ‘Big 3’ (cobras, Russell’s vipers, and kraits) in check. These Big 3 along with saw-scaled vipers kill more humans than other animals do. Not only are king cobras endangered, but their extinction would only mean higher human casualties.

While cobras are considered God and called Nagaraja and Aadishesha; king cobras (Kalinga, as known in Kannada) are considered evil (‘Raahu’ and ‘Ketu’) by some communities. In a section of Malnad region, some people abandoned their houses after king cobras died there. Thanks to sensitisation efforts, such practices have come down. Also, methods such as pouring hot water or kerosene on snakes, and poking them with sticks to drive them away, have been minimised.

Birthing 28 babies

In July 2018, I had witnessed 28 king cobra hatchlings take their first slither into the wild as Ajay acted as their ‘midwife’.

King cobras are the only snakes to build nests to lay eggs, and a female had made its nest next to Shivakumar Rao’s house in Kigga, Sringeri taluk. It was before the monsoon and when Ajay visited the house, the mother snake had left the nest with 32 eggs in it. Ajay placed a net fencing the nest and guarded it for 75 days till the hatchlings emerged.

I remember the day vividly. Amid rains, he picked each snake from the nest with his hook and placed them in bags. Then, as part of his research, he made notes about them before releasing them in the jungle.

Our conversation continued till the solar lights, the only source of power at the base, faded away. The next morning, about 50 students of Samse Government High School in Chikkamagaluru came visiting to learn about the rich biodiversity of the forest.

Sometimes, snakes give ‘false bites’ without injecting any venom, Ajay told them. But in all cases, quick treatment at a hospital is a must. “Do not panic. Lie down without moving the bitten part, and remove all tightly worn ornaments like rings. Tying a piece of cloth tightly can be counterproductive,” he said.

An anti-venom injection is the only treatment for any snake bite and alternative treatments like sucking out the venom and blood from the wound, applying turmeric or ‘magic’ powders given by babas, won’t work. Making the victim drink water or alcohol isn’t helpful either. The interaction with children went on for two hours.

Many calls a day

Every day, Ajay gets a call or two for snake rescue. However, during the peak season, between March and August, he gets six to eight calls a day from the districts of Shivamogga, Chikkamagaluru, and Udupi.

Ajay has a master’s degree in environmental science. He trained under herpetologist Romulus Whitaker and has been part of the radio telemetry project that has studied king cobras and discovered aspects of their cannibalistic behaviour, habitats, and nesting patterns.

Ajay feels there is lots more to learn. For instance, why is there a huge gap in the male to female ratio among king cobras? What threats do the snakes face in the wild? How are they coping with unbridled ‘development’?

I have been to Agumbe seven times, and every time I have returned with new, fascinating insights about a much-misunderstood species.

Agumbe rainscape

Until a few years ago, Agumbe was called ‘the Cherrapunji of South’ for record rainfall. But now, the village, inhabited by not more than 1,000 families, is witnessing lower rainfall year on year. Deforestation and unscientific afforestation are some reasons.

Agumbe is flanked by the thick forests of Someshwara Wildlife Sanctuary and the Kudremukh National Park on one side (towards Udupi), and the Agumbe forest leading towards Sringeri and Shivamogga.

Late actor-director Shankar Nag shot the portion of ‘Swamy & Friends’ for the iconic TV serial ‘Malgudi Days’, based on R K Narayan’s stories, in Agumbe. Even Kannada cine idol Rajkumar had shot his famous song — ‘Agumbe ya prema sanjaye’ — in and around this village.

Research station

Nestled in the thick rainforests of the Western Ghats, Agumbe is considered a ‘natural laboratory’ due to its species diversity. India’s well-known herpetologist Romulus Whitaker set up Agumbe Rainforest Research Station (ARRS) over 10 acres of an agricultural field in 2005.

While ARRS facilitates research on frogs, birds, and other animals endemic to the Western Ghats, the primary focus is on king cobra, the world’s longest venomous snake.

ARRS provides internships to students and researchers. They also invite citizens to volunteer on projects on the strict condition that they won’t touch snakes or other animals.