AFTERNOON (Bombay, India) 19 December 06 Stowaway Snake! SPCA rescues python from aboard ship at high seas!
Sunday morning the Bombay Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in association with the Bai Sakarbai Dinshaw Petit Hospital for Animals conducted a never-before rescue operation for a rare Indian Rock Python found atop the deck of an oil tanker at high sea. The 48 crew members aboard the Rama Raghoba Rane PVC were shocked and frightened at seeing a ten-foot python coiled up at the corner of the top deck near the bow of the ship.
“We did not want to kill it,” said Captain G. C. Das. “In fact, even if we had wanted to, we were too scared to get too close to it! But we did throw a net over it so if it had fallen overboard by mistake we could have easily fished it out. Bombay Port Trust security was not equipped for such an unusual situation, so they called upon the SPCA instead.”
SPCA special guards, Sunil Shyamkumar Ranade and Sandeep P Raul, immediately set forth on this special mission, and a four-hour (fishing) boat journey later, they had reached their destination.
“I was seasick and vomited all the way,” chuckled Raul. “I had no idea until then!” Upon conversing with the crew members on the lower deck, the duo decided not to try and capture the snake from the ladder leading up behind it but to risk facing it instead.
“We could have fallen overboard and that could not have been good for anybody!” laughed Ranade.
Thirty minutes later the snake was coiled up inside a gunny bag filled with straw. Their tools in its capture: two hooked “pick-up sticks” and one long tong or “grab stick”. Then another four-hour journey commenced, sea-sick Raul notwithstanding, and the python is now at the Parel Hospital, recovering from its trauma.
“We will keep it for observation for another three to four days and then release it to the Wildlife authorities,” said Colonel Jagdish Khanna, Secretary of Mumbai SPCA. “It came to us Sunday morning at four and is placed under strict observation. Fortunately, the snake is not physically harmed in any way; it is just traumatised and will recover soon.”
For Hospital manager, Ashish Sutar, the call asking them to rescue the snake is a sign of great improvement in the people’s mindset.
“Usually the people’s first instinct is to kill,” he said. “But they didn’t. They stayed below deck and chose to call for a rescue operation.”
The hospital has no special resting place for a snake, so a square cage was immediately called for and the snake left there, in an enclosure between the aviary and the monkeys. To prevent the inquisitive monkeys from irritating the python, Sutar and the workers brought in bales of hay grass to pad the dividing wall with.
“Normally we get to bring in birds and elephants from the roads and the wildest we have got to were circus lions,” said Col. Khanna. “This was totally unprecedented.”
http://www.cybernoon.com/DisplayArticle.asp?section=fromthepress&subsection=inbombay&xfile=December2006_inbombay_standard11669
