When I was in practice in the UK I did see a number of clients with pet snakes of various sorts and was always intrigued by them. I thought when I moved here to Mindanao that would be the end of all that but I now find this is not the case and that people do in fact keep pet snakes. One of the main differences of course is that in England we have only one venomous snake, the adder, and deaths even among small dogs which have been bitten are extremely rare, over here there are a number of poisonous snakes so I will be taking great care!
Talking to the local people I find that the most feared snake is the cobra, and deaths from its bite do occur as this quote from The Mindanao Examiner shows ” GENERAL SANTOS CITY (Mindanao Examiner / 08 Jun) – A four-year old boy was killed after he was bitten by a cobra in the southern Philippines, police said on Friday. Police said the boy was fetching water from a river in the village of Baliton in Sarangani’s Glan town when he was bitten by the snake on Wednesday. The boy’s cousin said he saw how the snake attacked. The boy later collapsed and died while his father was trying to find a witch doctor to cure the son from the deadly poison. Police said it only took 20 minutes and the boy was dead. It was the third time that a cobra had killed a boy in the village. In the Philippines, snake venom is rare.” Cobras can be found close to houses and gardens even here in Davao city.
Given that there are a number of very poisonous snakes in Mindanao why would people keep them as pets, well it turns out that some people notably members of the Chinese community here think that keeping large snakes in your house or business premises brings good luck and wealth. This practice has led to a number of urban myths the principal one being that the ladies’ fitting rooms in a certain shopping mall are supposedly equipped with trap doors in the floor, which swallow up women shoppers without warning. These trap doors lead to the basement of the mall, where there lurks a mutant beast, half-snake, half-man, who kills and eats the women who fall through. When I am in Manila I sometimes speak to taxi drivers about this story and I am convinced that the majority of them believe it implicitly, and tell me variants of it. Or I suppose it could be they are just stringing the silly foreigner along in the hope of a larger tip!
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Hi !
I have moved to Dapitan, in Zamboanga del northe. Im building a house by the riverside abouth 2 km from the ocean. What kind of toxic snakes is it in this area and how big is the risk to be bitten og one of them …………………….
Regards from Cato