IVattam Adithya from Bellary, Karnataka State, and administrator in indiansnakes.org& a snake rescuer since 15 years, have rescued more than 6500 odd snakes& released
them into safe habitats. I have conducted many awarenessprogrammes on snakes to general public & school children reliving theirminds of the many myths about snakes. Now I have started a program called
LIVING with SNAKES. Some of you mightbe perplexed by the context. Instead of rescuing non-venomous like Rat snakes,red sand boa’s, trinket snake, Green vine snake, Wolf snake from humanhabitats, we plan to leave them where they are. This might sound
ridiculous andstupid but we have got results by explaining the people about the advantage ofhaving these snakes in their surroundings.
A week back I rescued an 8 foot rat snake froma rice mill and later asked the mill owner weather I can come back to the millwith the snake & explain the advantageous
of having a snake like this inhis mill. He was silent for a moment and then asked me to come over. The verynext day I was there, all the 30 odd workers gathered around me & I startedexplaining the facts & advantageous of the snake. That it is a non venomoussnake,
it eats more than 400 rats per year & easy to handle I even showedthem how to identify the snake by showing them some key features about thespecies, one of them came forward & asked me weather he too can handle thesnake I said it’s absolutely safe. He right
away took the snake into his hands,later all the 30 odd workers there started handling the snake. There werepresent the Mill owner & his children they too enjoyed handling the snake.
After sometime I put forth the ideaof releasing the snake in their mill & to my astonishment everyone agreedto my plan took the snake in their hands &
released it into stakes ofpaddy. We now want to spread this idea across, to all the other mills in ourplace & hopefully across India.
They too have the right to livealong side us like all other animals like dogs, pigs, cattle, cats &monkeys. These animals are also potentially dangerous
& spread diseases butstill we live harmoniously alongside them. Snakes don’t spread any diseases &we can live alongside some species of snakes. They seldom attack people. Theyonly strike or bite when threatened or cornered when they have no place to fleeor
else the first thing the snake does on sight of a human is flee.