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Thu 27 Jul 2006

"A snake-charmed life in Singapore"

Category : nature

I was chatting with Chee Kong (blog-author of Singapore Snakes) who dropped by the Raffles Museum today. We were hunting down snake references, when we came across this article:

Richardson's charming tale talks about his enlightened encounters with several different species of snakes in Singapore. Somehow his article reminded me of a D. H. Lawrence poem, "Snake" that I learnt as school-kid in 1980.

"A Snake-Charmed Life in Singapore." By Michael Richardson. International Herald Tribune, 07 Jan 1997. [pdf]

"One morning not long ago, I came down to my office to find a grass snake curled up at the bottom of the large wicker basket I use for waste paper. The person who cleans the office had removed the paper by hand but had evidently not seen the snake, which continued to slumber on peacefully until I dropped it back into the grass on the far side of the lane that runs past our house.

If people tell you that snakes can't fly, don't believe them. I was sitting at my desk, stone cold sober on a bright sunny day, looking out the open door onto the garden when an object, rather like a small flying saucer, landed with a splat on the grass."

Read the complete story at IHT.

Posted at 5:28PM SGT by N. Sivasothi | permalink | email |