Deadly Encounter with Russell's Viper (Daboia russelii)

Deadly Encounter with Russell's Viper (Daboia russelii)

 December 26th 2013

Russell's viper is one of the Big Four medically important snake of India,and causes as many or more snakebites than cobras... and has Haemotoxic venom (Affecting the circulatory system) causing blood clots and destroying the tissues at the site of bite...!!!

Russell's viper is common through out India... Found in open grassy areas,rocky hillocks and in and around mangroves(Mumbai coast)

One fine morning of Dec 26th... I got a snake call from 2nd Cross lane Lokhandwala,Andheri-west...! I reached there.. the caller informed me that their is a snake trapped badly in a nylon net... since morning 4-5 a.m and making a kind of hissing noise like a pressure cooker... finally i saw it and it was a Russell's viper around 4.5fts trying its best to come out from the trapped net... i had handled many of these vipers before... but never saw this kind of situation before...!!

Finally I made my mind that the snake is in trouble and have to cut the net of... but for that have to head grab the deadly viper which was already hesitate... I was scared but had to do... it was now or never for me... with the help of my snake handling hook... i pressed the head of trapped snake and hold it tightly just allowing it to breath... but was very careful as viper's have fangs which can move backwards and upwards against the roof of the mouth and can open to 180 degrees which could easily penetrate my finger while i am holding the snake(head)... local people provided some small sharp blades which i used to cut the net but the net was very tough to cut... it took around 2 hours to cut the net from its mid body region towards its head... and while cutting i got several cuts on my finger which was bleeding... than one of the local person provided me scissors... which was helping a lot...

The final part was to cut the net near its head... at this point of time the snake just wanted to bite me and was struggling to get released from net... and my hand...!!!

That snake was free but could not let it go as it was unsafe to release the snake at the same spot due to human population which would have had harmed humans as well as the snake... so i bagged it and released it at the same time near mangroves patch... and also offered some water as viper's turn hot quickly...!!



Hope so the snake is still alive and enjoying the wild after this deadly encounter with humans....!!!!









Thank you for reading my post...!!!