Reader Submission: Snakes and Dogs
Recently there was an article on snakes on Thailandblog. Occasionally we also have one in our garden. My Thai wife's first reaction is to panic when there is a snake in the garden. It always takes me the greatest effort to calm her down.
What matters in the first place is whether the dogs are loose in the garden or whether they are stuck. If they run loose, it generally looks bad for the snake. Cobra or not. My dogs are of the local (Phitsanulok) breed Bang Kaew. They are known to be very territorial and will immediately attack and preferably kill anything that does not belong in that territory.
Fortunately, they know that a snake can be deadly for them. That is why together they operate extremely carefully and are well attuned to each other. If one dog distracts attention, the other dog quickly jumps up to the snake and tries to grab it. It is impossible, when the dogs are so excited, to tie them up.
If the snake is dangerous (cobra), it is also wiser not to distract them. When the snake tires of the constant attacks and loses its attention for a moment, one of the dogs immediately grabs it, shakes its head violently and releases it. The snake then usually flies a few meters through the air.
Sometimes he is already dead when he hits the ground again. But just to be sure, he is grabbed again and shaken violently before he is released again. After a while, the pieces of hose fly in all directions. When we are not at home, we sometimes later find parts of a snake in the branches of a tree.
However, we prefer to chase the snake out of the garden. So when the dogs are stuck, we open the gate and try to chase the snake out with a long stick when it's big. Little ones are simply swept up and released outside.
Recently, after a fight with a probably venomous green snake, Jimmy, that's the name of one dog, started licking one of his paws and howled violently. Bitten we thought. Immediately by car to the vet. It was already dark. There they shaved his one leg to see where exactly he had been bitten. Turns out he was only bothered by those little bitches of black ants. Fortunately, the hair on his leg has grown back in the meantime.
Submitted by Arend