Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/508

492 a bird in its mouth, making off through some light hushes, where it had probably seized the bird, though it had not had time to swallow it. We very soon disabled the snake by a blow on the back; but as it was by no means dead we secured it with a small rope, and dragged it into the portico of the bungalow for the sake of trying experiments with it. We sent for one of the numerous village dogs called pariahs, but the snake would not look at the dog. A fowl was then brought and placed with its legs tied, near the snake's head. The snake revived a little, and made a dart at the fowl, but the bird evaded it, and struggling to its feet it gave the cobra a fierce peck on the head, which quite decided the battle. The fact was that the snake was too much injured by the blow on the spine that had disabled it; and, moreover, it had probably spent its freshness and most deadly venom in killing the small bird which it had seized before we saw it. Many years afterward I saw a cobra bite a fowl, and turned to look at my watch to see how long it would be before the poison took effect. As I looked back again toward the fowl it fell down quite dead, within thirty seconds from the time it was bitten. This occurred in the house of a friend who had engaged an itinerant snake-charmer to exhibit snakes to a party of guests. Several cobras, deprived of their poisonous fangs, had been exhibited in the usual manner, when the snake-charmer stated that he had with him a snake of which the poisonous fangs were intact, and he offered to show it. He dealt with it very carefully with a forked stick in producing it from a basket, and he was equally cautious when he placed the fowl near enough to the snake to be bitten by it. What the result of the bite was to the fowl has been already told. There can be little doubt that if this cobra had managed to bite its keeper or any of the spectators, with its fangs fully charged with fresh venom, it would have been almost if not quite impossible to save their life.

It is always expedient in India to have a dog or a cat or a mungoose (a sort of ichneumon) about the house to keep away snakes, or to draw attention to them when they are crawling about. My wife's dog probably saved her life by barking at two snakes which had got into her dressing-room. A cat with kittens once drew my attention, by her extraordinary antics, to a large cobra, which she was trying to keep away from her young ones. The mungoose is the professional enemy of the snake, and goes for him at once to kill him, and perhaps to eat him. There is no valid foundation for the belief that the mungoose has recourse to an antidote to protect itself against a snake's venom. The mungoose relies on his own agility and sharp teeth, and on the coarse hair of his skin, which will avert most snake-bites. But if the snake gets well home, so as to lodge his poison in the mungoose's skin, that mungoose will surely die. It is not dissimilar to the case of the