SNAKES AS PETS

I have never been able to understand why people would want to keep snakes as pets. Indeed, I would go further and say that every person I have ever met, who has kept a snake as a pet, has been slightly - well - creepy. After all, it is not as if you can do much with them. If they are venomous, then you can't really touch them at all; and if they are a constrictor, then they mix very long periods of docility with frenetic wriggling at feeding time. Every now and then, you read about some toddler being strangled by a boa that got overfriendly; but why would anybody want to put a boa, however friendly, anywhere near a toddler?

Humans have been having problems with serpents since Adam and Eve had a chat with one about a fruit tree, and I don't think matters have improved much since. When I lived in Tanzania, the owner of a popular restaurant kept a large python in a cage by the front gate. Being a python in a cage, it just sat there, until the owner gave it a live chicken to get to work on every once in a while. The python was supposed to be good for business. But it put me off going there (and I certainly never had the chicken on the menu!). In fact, Africans generally have the best answer to any snake that they see, they kill it dead with a stick as quickly as possible.

I am reminded of these unpleasant things by a story from Germany last week. On 18 March in the town of Mühlheim a 30cm long monacled cobra escaped from the terrarium in its 19-year old owner's flat. Because such a snake is venomous, and there were other residents in the building, they had to be evacuated while the authorities tried to find the wretched creature. The owner's flat was stripped, with walls being ripped down and floorboards pulled up. Still no snake. So the building was sealed, and a sticky-tape trap set. After three weeks of daily checks, the snake was eventually found stuck to the tape; it had apparently died from exhaustion.

Not the sort of guy you want to have as your neighbour, in my view. However, every cloud has a silver lining. Although the other residents can now move back into their apartments, the young herpetologist's flat is uninhabitable. He is also reported to be facing a bill from the authorities for Euros100.000 in costs.

Walter Blotscher