- PATNA -- Rajkiran Rai of
Pawapur village in Vaishali district had never witnessed anything more
"ominous" before. On the morning of January 7, as he stepped
out of his house to get some straw from his backyard, he discovered three
huge cobras.
-
- Rai ran back into his house to fetch a stick. But he
was surprised to find, a few minutes later, that the snakes hadn't moved
even after his panic reaction.
-
- A religious person, Rai did not intend to use his stick.
But the snakes refused to budge even after he uttered some mantras and
made some sounds to scare them away.
-
- On closer inspection, Rai found the cobras dead. "They
might have come here for some warmth in the straw heap and died of cold,"
he said.
-
- "Mere khyal mein, thand ke chalte saap bhi marne
lage hain (I think snakes have also begun dying due to the cold),"
the village mukhiya, Ramsaran, told forest officers.
-
- A cold wave sweeping through Bihar since the first week
of January has already claimed many lives, mostly children and the elderly.
-
- Pawapur is not the only village to report snake deaths
since January 8. Other villages that reported snake deaths in Vaishali
are Bira, Dharanpur, Sarai, Jatkuli, Dhobghati.
-
- "There have been at least 300 snake deaths (in the
last one week) in around four blocks of Vaishali," said a sub-divisional
officer of the district.
-
- Villagers were awe-struck to find 14 dead snakes in a
forest patch in Vikram, Patna. "I suspect the snake deaths in the
state are coming from everywhere. Vaishali may be a spot where it is more
visible," said state environment, forest and water resources minister
Jagdanand Singh. "This is obviously because of rapid denudation of
forests and an abnormal cold wave sweeping the state, which is taking a
heavy toll of human lives too."
-
- Snakes are worshipped in the villages and their deaths
are seen as an ominous portent. "In some of the villages, the vaid
(medicine men) are predicting a natural calamity since they believe that
the world is borne by Basuki Nag. Death of snakes bear ill omen for us
all," said Rajiv Tiwari, a block level welfare officer in Dhobghati
village.
-
- Even wildlife experts aren't comfortable with the news.
"We feel the death of snakes at this time of the year is not normal.
The reptiles go into hibernation in winter and don't come out of their
pits. If they do, they will die in no time because their new skin is yet
to crustify," said Akhilesh Prasad of the Sanjay Gandhi Zoological
Gardens in Patna.
-
-
-
- Copyright © 2001 The Telegraph All rights reserved
-
|
