Best Posts in Thread: SNAKES

It started on March 8, 2020. I hear wife screaming really loud out in the front yard and I remove my headset. She is screaming, “Jim SNAKE!”.By the time I get out there our Doberman has a very large Filipino Cobra in the corner of our fenced in front the yard and it is striking at the Doberman. I retrieve a shovel and by the time I get back the Cobra have moved north along the west wall and was going through a wire fence into the small garden along the west side of the house. I did get a very good look at it as it entered the garden. No doubt in my mind it was a full grown Cobra a good 7 or 8 feet long and about as big around as a tennis ball. I ran around the house because the gate into the garden is in the back yard. By the time I got in the garden the Cobra had escaped into the nabber’s yard and disappeared in the tall grass.
Wife said that the snake was in the Lanzone tree and that the Doberman had jumped about 7 foot into the tree and snatched that Cobra out of the tree. The snake had a rat coiled and was in the process of eating it. The snake abandoned the rat meal and the two Rottweilers finished the rats off while the Doberman handled the snake.
Now here is where the weird comes in. The very next day March 9th. the handy man was off but the house keeper was here. At about 09:00 the wife and the house keeper start screaming “SNAKE, the SNAKE IS BACK!!” I get there and I had a very hard time seeing it, it is in the very same Lanzone tree as the one the day before. I use the shovel to knock it out of the tree. It hoods up and strikes several times at the Doberman. This is not the same snake that was pulled out of this tree the day before. This one is only about half the size of yesterday’s snake. The Doberman snatches it up about mid way and shakes it something terrible. Drops it and it went right back to striking at the dog. The Doberman gave it a replay and this time throws it about 25 feet across the front yard. The house keeper is quick with the shovel and quickly dispatches it.
I can a sure you that this snake is alive and well right here in Valencia. This snake is a “Spitting Cobra” These snakes are not aggressive in fact the two we encountered did their best to escape.
That Doberman has earned my very best of respect. Last year she woke us up to a fire at 03:00 in the morning and now she handled two cobras in two days without her or us being hurt.

 

Killing a snake in defense is acceptable. However, going out of your way to kill a snake while it is trying to escape seems mean and an over reaction. I am a lover of all animals and find snakes beautiful and fascinating. That doesn't mean I would be comfortable finding one in my cottage.

Actually, I am the guardian of 13 cats and 3 dogs which I all adopted after they were thrown out on the roadside or the beach. With 13 cats we have not sighted one mouse or rat, and the only snakes I have seen are the ones the cats drag up from the beach. They are the unfortunate sea snakes that come to shore to mate and lay eggs. They are very slow and vulnerable on land. They are also one of the most venomous snakes in the world. However, they have such a mild manner, very few people have been recorded to have been bitten, even fisherman who remove them from their nets by hand. If anyone is going to get bitten, it would be the fishermen, but that rarely happens.

I have a space under my entry door that is easily entered by snakes and other little creatures such as centipedes. I do now have rugs stuffed under the door to prevent entry at night. One morning before I started to block the entry, I woke up to a sea snake with it head and part of its body in my cottage. It was dead. When I opened the door, the other part of the snake had been mostly eaten by my cats.

On another occasion a fully mobile sea snake was being harassed by some of my cats. One of the cats had carried it up from the beach. Sea snakes are slow and have no coil or striking ability on land. They are almost totally helpless out of the water. I shooed my cats away and carried the snake down to the beach and threw it in the water. I feel sorry for the sea snakes, but I cannot deny that I am grateful that all of the terrestrial snakes stay away.

 

When you discover a snake in your house and you're alone at night and have no idea what kind of snake it is. It could be non venomous or venomous and you live in the sticks so no neighbors. I don't take chances, only one action to take and I took the correct one. I'm alive and the snake is dead.
I'll do it again and again, I'm not an expert in snakes, It's the first snake I have seen outside of a zoo.

 

I like your thinking - most animals and plants have a purpose but humans think we can destroy them just because we don't 'like' them.

 

I think snakes as a species have the problem that some of them are actually dangerous, and not many people can tell them apart, so all of them suffer when they come too close to people. I wouldn't mind a snake in my garden if I knew for sure it's not going to kill me when I accidentally get too close. Bonus points for killing rats, of course.

 

First I was confronted be a Python in a house in Dumaguete on Cervantes St. Down town. I have seen several snakes dead on the street in town along with even more dead rats. Snakes go there their food is and their food is RATs and Lizards. Dumaguete has their share of both. I have seen rats running in Hipper Mart and one of then ran over my foot while I was shopping there not very long ago. The two I encountered in my Lanzone tree were after a mama rat and her baby rats. Where there are RATS there is SNAKES. No matter where you live. Living in the city is not going to save you from SNAKES. If you google Filipino Snakes You will discover that there is hundreds of snake species here in the Philippines.

 

You killed the snake because it posed a potential danger to you - that is not the same as killing when they do not pose a threat just because you don't like them. I would kill a human intruder in my house but not kill humans outside my house just because I don't like them (well, perhaps a few exceptions! )