Culture
When There’s a Snake in the House, These Guys Can Help
In the Indian city of Madurai, a volunteer group deals humanely with emergencies of the reptile kind.
MADURAI, INDIA—On a humid summer evening last July, Srinivasan Venkataswamy, 42, a property consultant in the South Indian city of Madurai, was lowered an inch at a time into a 30-foot well. When he reached 15 feet, a wave of dizziness and nausea engulfed him. The air was sparse, but he needed to focus.
Clinging to the sides of the well, he trained the beam of light from his head torch into the inky darkness below and listened in rapt attention. He could hear a faint hiss. The people who had alerted him a few days ago were right: A snake had somehow found its way into this abandoned well, probably fallen headlong while hunting for prey. The children in the area were throwing stones at it; it was a miracle the snake had survived.