Hiss story

According to Whitaker,Agumbe is the likeliest place in the country to spot a king cobra. “Half the people who visit us spot one,” he says. In 2008,the Agumbe Rainforest Research Station (ARRS) embarked on the first-ever radio telemetry study of king cobras and recorded never-before-seen behaviour like scavenging,diving and cannibalism. These rare insights will be published in the months to come.

The 11-acre ARRS campus borders the Agumbe rainforest complex,a Fort Knox of biodiversity that encompasses several hundred square kilometres of thick forest cover,extending up to the Someshwara Wildlife Sanctuary and the Kudremukh National Park. The property,home to over 40 snake species,is a patchwork of landscapes: it includes a vine-and-moss-drenched forest,a stream gilded by aquatic plants,a neglected areca nut plantation,a rain-sluiced grassland and a verdant meadow where,on a summer evening,one can chance upon deer and the yellow-wattled lapwing. A downpour washes the little cottages and drowns out the rasp of cicadas. There is a joke in Agumbe that one should wash clothes here and dry them in Thirthahalli,about 30 km away. “We don’t know what makes Agumbe a magnet for clouds — it records up to 400 inches of rain a year. But it’s a weak monsoon this year,” says Siddharth Rao,field director at ARRS.

Rao,a photographer-turned-conservationist,shares his exposed brick cottage with tadpoles he rescued from dry patches and a Malabar pit viper that has taken a shine to his porch. Endemic to the Western Ghats,the viper — whose bite isn’t fatal,though it will leave you swollen and in agony for days – is a master of disguise. One has wrapped itself around a wood beam outside the main ARRS building; it watches,impassive,as the half dozen resident researchers turn shutterbugs. “Pit vipers cannot run fast,but when they take aim and attack,they rarely miss. Their fangs are so sharp that when a king cobra preys on them,it catches them by the neck to avoid getting bitten,” says Dhiraj Bhaisare,a researcher at ARRS.

He followed two of the five king cobras that were part of the radio telemetry study for over 500 days,wading across streams,walking several miles through leech-infested vegetation and taking pictures and videos en route. He has written a paper on the king cobra preying on pit vipers — a practice never documented in the wild,since these venomous snakes have so far only been known to eat cobras,ratsnakes,small pythons,and when starving,monitor lizards. In Bhaisare’s videos,the secret life of the king cobra comes alive. Seen for the first time on camera is a king cobra dragging a cobra underwater for close to 20 minutes,as the latter drowns.

The snake may face over-exploitation in southeast Asia,but it slithers on uncertain footing in India: feared as the hooded predator immortalised in B-grade Bollywood cinema and revered as a god who accepts offerings of milk in exchange for protection,it now finds itself at the mercy of human habitation. “The king cobra has a keen homing instinct. So when it enters someone’s home,it is because it’s a part of the snake’s habitat. It’s not because it wants to attack anyone. But people usually panic and call a snake catcher. He either kills it to demonstrate his machismo or bags it and releases it somewhere in a forest,” says Rao. Even the most well-intentioned of these rescue-men,can endanger a snake. A displaced king cobra often tries to find its way back and may die on the way from a lack of prey or of territorial conflicts with other snakes.

In the villages near Agumbe,however,there is a deep reverence for the kalinga — the king cobra — that may still play a role in its conservation. “We worship the cobra,but the king cobra is a snake so holy that a sighting calls for a pilgrimage to the Kukke Subramanya temple in Sullia taluk,” says Nagaraj Pujari,the cook at ARRS.

A visit to Hullane,a village of about 30 where a king cobra appeared at farmer HT Thimmappa’s cowshed two months ago,confirms the importance of rituals surrounding cobra worship. “Each village here has a patch of forest known as nagarabana (the snake’s forest). We bathe before we enter this sacred grove and ensure no one defiles it by plucking fruit or walking in with their shoes. A puja is performed here every month,” says Thimmappa.

Back in Agumbe village,the rain ceases for a short while and wreaths of wood smoke curl up the tiled roofs to perfect the ambience of a timeless place. At Dodda Mane (large house),a 120-year-old house on the main road where much of the TV series Malgudi Days was filmed,Kasturi akka,the lady of the house,says the king cobra is worshipped as a god of fertility and a sighting usually calls for naming the next child to be born into the family “nagaraja”.

An underground cellar in the house,barred by a wood trapdoor,was built as an undisturbed haven for snakes,one that her forefathers instructed her never to open. Her son-in-law,Ravi Kumar,leads us out the back of the house,beyond the unused cowshed,to a small,square,gated enclosure: inside,black stone tablets,each with a kalinga chiselled on it,rest against a canopy of green. “This is our moolanaga (community deity). Every community has one,and we are supposed to worship here each day,” he says.

The ARRS gets 30-40 calls a year from villagers who want a king cobra removed from their yards. “We call it conflict mitigation. Each time we are called,we spend an hour or two explaining why they need not be afraid of the snake. It is diurnal and shy,for 20 years,no one has died of a king cobra bite,” says Shyam Rao,an intern at ARRS from Colorado State University.

It is hard not to be afraid. As we walk in the forest and watch a couple of vine snakes hoping they would mate,something skitters through the mossy forest floor. Or maybe it is just the darkness that sneaks up on us like a quiet predator,a king cobra with its hood raised.