KING COBRA’S WRATH

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 928, 22 March 1930, Page 5

KING COBRA’S WRATH

HELPED TO SKIN HIMSELF FRIENDLY ASSISTANCE j Pat yourself in Siva’s place. If j you were the greatest and niost | deadly serpent that ever came to England, how would you like to have j people sticking poison under your I ribs while, bit by bit, they tried to | tear off your overcoat? That is what is happening now at ] the London Zoo. , No wonder Siva. threshes about his cage in a nasty j temper every time he is released | after treatment. Siva is the Zoo’s new 14ft King j Cobra. He arrived rather out of sorts after his voyage from Kuala Lumpur in the Far East. He was ready to shed his skin; but it has stuck to him. So every now and then four keepers administer the following treatment behind the scenes at the Reptile House. Yard by Yard First Siva’s head is noosed with the “snake-stick.” The soft leather loop closes behind his jaws and is drawn taut. Then he cannot bite. Next a yard or so of Siva is fished up and handed over to a keeper, and this is continued until the whole of the terrible creature is out of his cage. Three keepers hold Siva's body while one looks after the business end, which is held firmly in the “snake-stick.” While the men carefully detach as much of Siva’s overcoat as -will come away without hurting, a medical attendant injects a dose of strychnine between the scales. This tonic is designed to give Siva enough strength to shed the rest of his skin without further artificial help from the keepers. But it seems a casual kind of -way to treat the most dreaded and highly respected creature in the whole of the Far East.