GUANG MING DAILY (Malaysia) 02 September 06 3 Year Old Girl's Slithery Playmates
Kuala Terengganu: Most 3 year old girls love playing with cute and cuddly dolls, but one little Terengganu lass' cold blooded playmates would have made most people run away screaming.
Three and a half year old Siti Amirah Sayuti may look like any other adorable kid, but she's been handling and playing with poisonous snakes even while she was still in swaddling clothes.
Her father Sayuti Harun, 61, is a snake tamer. Siti, the youngest of 12 children, was only 20 days old when her father began using snakes to train her courage. From then on, the snakes became her playmates, and she grew to regard them as her closest friends.
As a professional snake tamer, Sayuti would travel all over the country to perform. He also sells traditional herbal remedies that he makes himself. He rears over 80 different species of snake in his home. Besides Siti, Sayudi's seventh offspring who is 18 years old also has a close relationship with snakes.
Siti might be young, but she has already been to many states, including Kedah, Pahang, Perak and Kelantan, to show off her skill at handling snakes.
Sayuti said that: "Siti is still a child, and sometimes she might sulk during a performance and refuse to touch the snakes. During those times, I have to find a way to cheer her up so she will continue with the performance."
He added that his daughter was more talented than him, because he had been bitten by his snakes many times despite being an experienced snake tamer, while his daughter had not been bitten even once. Whenever he places his daughter in a cage with the snakes, she always emerges unharmed.
Siti will be performing in a charity event at the Primula Beach Resort in Kelantan as part of the Merdeka Day celebration. She will be placed in a 6x6 feet cage together with 40 different species of poisonous snakes. (Guang Ming Daily)
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THE STAR (Petaling Jaya, Malaysia) 01 September 06 Snakes are like toys to three-year-old Siti Amirah
Photo at URL below: Such A Charmer: Siti Amirah sitting with her favourite snake Mimah just before she entered a cage with 30 snakes in Kuala Terengganu yesterday.
Kuala Terengganu: She loves playing with toys like any other three-year-old but the difference is that some of her “toys” are lethal – they include King Cobras.
Siti Amirah Sayuti from Kelantan is called the Princess of Snake due to her dexterity in handling the reptiles.
Calling each of her pet snakes by their nicknames, Siti Amirah mesmerised hundreds of spectators who turned up to celebrate the National Day at Primula Beach Resort here yesterday.
She singled out her favourite snake Mimah, a cobra, when Siti was confined in a cage with some 30 poisonous snakes.
Her father, Sayuti Harun, a snake charmer, had exposed his daughter to snakes when she was a year old and he noticed that there was a special bond between her and the snakes.
“I placed the snakes around Siti when she was a toddler and the reptiles seemed comfortable with her.
“I decided then that Siti would be my successor,” said the ex-soldier, 61.
Sayuti said he acquired snake-handling skills from his late father in 1971.
“I decided to pass the skills to my youngest child, who seems to have an interest in reptiles,” said the father of 12.
Sayuti said most of his snakes were captured in Kelantan and Terengganu.
He has 112 of them including pythons and rattlesnakes.
When she was confined with the snakes, Siti showed no fear. Instead she asked her pets: “Mu sihat?” (Are you fine?) in Kelantanese dialect.
She stayed with them for almost an hour. Some were curling up on her neck and hands.
When she left the cage, the crowd applauded loudly but Siti, unaffected by all the attention, reached out for her milk bottle.
http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2006/9/1/nation/15304440&sec=nation
