{Dear Python-people ... I know this item is not 'python-specific' ... however, if you link into the URL for the accompaning photo, you'll understand why I posted it.
Some people have way too much fun at work!
Cheers
Wes}
THE STAR (Petaling Jaya, Malaysia) 19 May 05 Reptiles move into new home (Choong Kwee Kim)
Heavy construction ma-chines rumbled on both sides of the Teong Poh Keong temple in Penang as temple members began moving tortoises and pythons from its animal sanctuary.
At 3pm last Friday as determined by the temple's deity through a medium, a knot of volunteers gathered around the two circular enclosures which were home to about 100 tortoises and five pythons.
Both the sanctuary and the temple at Cecil Street Ghaut are in the way of Phase Two of the Jelutong Expressway project that will link up Jalan Sungai Pinang to Weld Quay.
Batch by batch, the tortoises were placed on wheelbarrows and given a ride to their new home just a short crawl away at the vacant piece of land behind the present temple.
As for the pythons, the task of handling them fell on temple committee member Kang Hian Seng, 64, who has a cobra image tattooed on one arm.
“I have a certain affinity for snakes and they treat me like a friend,” Kang said as he gently removed the slithery reptiles to their new home.
Amid the excitement and din of construction, one of the pythons was left to incubate its eggs among a clump of vegetation at the edge of the vacant piece of land.
“It will look for its own food such as frogs and lizards in the vicinity without wandering away from the temple,” said temple building committee chairman Koay Poon Seng, adding that the snakes in the enclosures were fed chicken and eggs.
“The tortoises and snakes are believed to be the deity's soldiers as reflected in the idol of the deity stepping on a snake with the right leg while the left treads on a tortoise,” he added.
The belief in the sacred role of these animals in the deity's heavenly force had lead to their rescue from cooking pots and their proliferation at the temple's sanctuary over the years.
Koay said a temple medium would “consult” the deity for another auspicious date for the relocation of the deity's statue to a temporary shelter erected next to the vacant piece of land where the new temple would be rebuilt.
“We will need about RM500,000 to rebuild a new temple and will start fund raising activities next month,” he added.
Reptiles move into new home
