Thailand Snake Journal 1

Thailand Snake Journal 1
Yesterday I had a great time. Two guys from England came over to hunt snakes in Krabi. They’ve seen my ThailandSnakes.com site and my snake videos on YouTube and asked if I would help them find snakes in Krabi.

We met at the Cobra show. I introduced everyone to each other – Yaya, Jackie, Ip, Maak, Johnny, Mark and Tom – these last two were from England.

Before Matt and Tom arrived Jackie brought me a small – 24-inch reticulated python that was not tame… that was great fun, and I was bitten within 10 minutes – talking to Jackie with my hands and not watching the snake! It was a weak bite, little blood.

That was great anyway – I’ve not played with a wild retic before.

There was a baby monkey there – they have a monkey show at the cobra show – and it was amazing. It immediately climbed all over me and held on tight. It was way too young to be away from the mom – but this is how they do it here. The monkey LOVED me – then I found out why- the Thai guy that ran the monkey show was a barbarian and smacked the hell out of it – a hard palm smack to the head and knocked it off the table when he took it from me.

I’ve no idea why… it looked like that’s just what he does with it. I watched my anger inside rise and subside… So i watched this monkey get smacked in the head and fly off the table to the concrete floor and showed no reaction. I’ve had to accept seeing much worse than this without doing anything.

So – eventually, after the monkey got loose and came running to me to hide him and asshole was trying to catch him but I didn’t help him. Tom and Mark arrived. They showed the snake guys pics of these ultra-venomous snakes Tom keeps back in the UK. Wild colors… Tom breeds them now and sells them. He makes a living off that and works with kids with mental illness in a group home setting like I did in Tampa for 3 yrs.

The owner of the cobra show – a 35 yr old guy, he has good skills with snakes and 10 yrs’ experience. He asked if we wanted to go back and see the snakes. I had already set up with him that my friends would be coming so he kindly offered. Tom is a King Cobra nut.

We walked around the cages. There was a 2-meter-long rat snake, a giant falcon, and then about 15 reticulated pythons – some of them 5 meters long… these are chicken wire cages and you can get right up to them.

Next was the monocled cobra cage – there were about a dozen in there – up to 2 meters. They are ultra deadly too – their venom affects the central nervous system as well as being cytotoxic and causing those black necrotizing wounds that you might have seen people suffer from Thailand snakebites. Really sick stuff.

Tom pulled one out – and was playing with it – Johnny was bored and stuck his snake hook into the pack of them and pulled about 10 monocled cobras over to Tom’s feet. Tom now had 11 of the most dangerous snakes on the planet at his feet to deal with. We were all laughing – me nervously, others – for other reasons… lol. This began a sort of competition between the Thais and Westerners. The Thais of course winning and proud to show all they could do with the snakes without taking a bite and winding up dead.

After they saw Tom COULD handle 11 cobras they were impressed to some degree, but the next cage was the king cobra. It’s 4 meters long and Tom’s favorite is the King. He has a 3m king at home in England.

Tom played with that and then I asked Yaya, can we take it to the floor?

He was nice enough to agree, and Johnny came up and whipped that snake out of the cage, across the rain gutter, and through the plants over to the show floor. Amazing this guy can handle a 4-meter king like a toy.

The king cobras in Thailand are awesome. Though their venom is not near as deadly as the smaller monocled cobra – it can inject 7 ml of venom in one bite. This can, has, killed elephants, water buffalo, etc. Oh – and people.

Johnny’s younger brother – just 2 yrs ago – was killed by a bite that happened right there on the show floor. A new 5-meter king twisted around unexpectedly and lunged – biting his chest. He died in the car on the way to the hospital – 20 minutes away. He was dead in 10 minutes with Yaya driving furiously.

Yaya had to call Johnny and tell him – to come to the hospital, he brother was bit by a cobra. Johnny asked, “King?”. Yep. Well, just give him the antivenin and I’ll come up tomorrow. Yaya said, no, today Johnny – your little bro is dead already.

There were tears in Yaya’s eyes when he told me the story. Johnny’s little bro wanted to be like Johnny and was testing himself with the bigger, new King they had just got.

Everyone has been bitten there by cobras a couple of times, Johnny is missing a finger from a king bite he survived.

Surprisingly, before we left I asked Johnny and Jackie what their favorite snake was and Johnny said, the King Cobra.

Anyway – it was a great time – a competition between us – with the Thai guys outshining Tom and Matt just based on their years of experience – and also their familiarity with the snakes we were working with. I wasn’t even in the picture, but I did hold up the 4m King by myself for a couple of seconds while someone distracted his attention to the front away from me. Something I thought I’d NEVER do.

It’s hard to argue with so many expert snake handlers saying – you CAN DO IT, you can… So I did.

However, I wouldn’t, for any amount of cash – touch the head of the king cobra from the front. Matt did it though! Tom even kissed the top of the head of the King like they do in the cobra show – Johnny taught them how to do it. They are both good snake handlers with years of experience versus my years of playing around. I did as much as I cared to without dying…

They brought out a big python then and I played with that a while. The strikes are vicious on those things, but at least they aren’t venomous.

After we all gave a donation we were ready to go to the cars and Jackie brought out this wicked big 8″ centipede. Same as I’ve seen in Hawaii but in Hawaii I’ve seen them 11 inches.

Tom, Matt, and myself – we’re all scared to death of centipedes… Jackie had it crawling on his arm. We’re freaking out cuz he wants to put it on us. Everyone’s laughing like made. We had just played with some of the most deadly snakes in the world – confidently, and there we were pulling away like little children with this centipede. The problem is they bite QUICK and for no reason at all. I’ve been bitten in Hawaii by a tiny venomous Hawaiian centipede – 3 inches and it hurt a lot.

Jackie disappeared with it then came back with the centipede on his face.

That was enough for me – I said, let’s go guys…

Nope, Jackie wouldn’t allow it and told us he took the pincers off the centipede.

Well, that’s another rather sick thing about living here – they don’t think twice about things like this – removing the pincers so we could play with it. The centipede would never catch food in the same way again… Not sure they grow back.

So at Jackie’s insistence, we all let the beast crawl all over our arms and faces.

From there we went to a cave at a temple that usually has cave snakes – Ridley Racers. We didnt see them, but the monk there – also a friend of mine, took us on a guided tour of the grounds and all the caves – it was great fun despite not seeing the cave snakes (that catch bats out of the air for food).

The monk would walk a bit and pull off leaves and hand them to us and eat one himself. He did this over and over and over – we taste-tested about 12 types of plants around there that all looked like weeds – but were edible because none of us got sick. Really cool monk. He opened a door for us and bats all flew out of this room – horrorshow like. Funny guy.

We went back to their “resort” which is a mountain resort near the temple steps I climb all the time. It’s really secluded and they’d already found four snakes there. We checked out those snakes – a small white-lipped viper (deadly), a painted bronzeback snake (venomless), and an oriental whip snake (venom, but non-biting) that was just beautiful… oh , and a paradise tree snake – they can glide over many meters jumping from tree to tree or tree to ground. Cool snakes. I’ve found and kept some here before too (non-venomous).

We went out for a night hunt and found many frogs, an amazing gecko (pic attached) and a 2 meter mangrove snake that tom had to climb 30 feet up the tree and grab with these long tongs. A great effort – and icing on the cake for the day.