My encounter with Mr Russell's Viper.

It was a sunny afternoon of saturday in the month of december 2010.We had recently moved in to our newly constructed home which is rather in the midst of a lot of green cover. Me along with my brother and a common friend were in the balcony when all of a sudden my friend noticed something moving on the road, it was a huge snake, we were shocked and surprised to see such a big snake.It slowly crept into pile of woods that were placed in the vacant plot beside my house.We thought it to be a cobra and were eagerly waiting on the balcony to get another glimpse of it. It was pretty big in size, may be around 5.5 feet in length, with diamond shaped brown colored markings all over its body. I quickly got out my cybershot sony camera hoping to capture it, felt like a wildlife photo grapher for few minutes :-)
                                             My 3 hours long wait to get another glimpse of the creepy creature, gave me lot of thoughts to ponder upon.I was thinking about the wildlife photographer's dedication & passion to shoot the animals, spending months & years together in the wild.

 

                                          
                                                                   My patience got paid off, the snake hesitantly started creeping out slowly out of the logs. Me and my brother quickly went down the stairs to capture the venomous creatue in our camera, while my wife, mother and nephew were still in the balcony shouting out at us to be cautious with the dangerous animal. I turned on the camera instantly and started clicking at the snake in all possible views and ways before it went into the logs all over again for the noise that we made trying to click a picture of it. For the rest of the day it did not come out, poor creature, we must have scared it to the core. Later that day i did a google on the variety of snake species found in India and got to know that it was a highly venomous snake, Russell's Viper. Some of the facts that literally shivered me about Russell's Viper were

1. Russell's viper is one of the most dangerous snakes in all of Asia.
2. Once bitten, people experience a wide variety of symptoms including pain, swelling, vomiting, dizziness,   blood incoagubility and kidney failure.
3. It accounts to the maximum fatalities among snake bites in India.

I got to know from the locals that there are a plenty of them in here, these days whenever i am outside my house, my hope of sighting another Mr Russell's become stronger. This encounter of mine with the creepy creature has installed lot of respect and admiration for these wonderful animals. No creature is dangerous until and unless threatened upon by man. It is we human beings who have trespassed into its territory. They are the rightful owners !