Snakes are surprising survivors in built-up Hong Kong but residents need not be afraid, experts say
by Charley Lanyon, Mon, June 30, 2014
"Last summer Carmel Huber, director of Elephant Asia Rescue and Survival foundation, was walking home along a dark, branch-strewn path on Lamma Island, when she felt a sudden searing pain. "It was like a red hot poker had been jabbed into my ankle," she says. Her ankle began to swell, and an ugly bruise started to spread up her leg. The stick she stepped on turned out to be a baby cobra. Encounters such as Huber's, while uncommon, happen more frequently than most people imagine. According to the Hospital Authority, public hospitals treated 67 snakebite cases in 2013, including three involving cobras.
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After being bitten, Huber called the police who quickly transferred her to Queen Mary Hospital. Prescribing antivenom can be tricky - and this is why it is often a good idea to try to take a picture of the snake that bit you - as different snakes need different antidotes. But Huber and her boyfriend have pet snakes and an interest in reptiles, so she knew it was a cobra. "You do get quite emotional at the time. Your mind races, and you wonder what is going to happen. I did worry if I was going to die or lose a limb." Still, Huber never blamed the snake: "It was an accident; the poor thing was just trying to find its dinner and I stepped on it."
At the hospital, her fears were quelled: "The staff really know what they are doing. I was given a few doses of antivenom, and they released me the next day." Huber emerged without lasting effects aside from a spot of nerve damage in her ankle. The snakes of Lamma were not so lucky, she says. "When I was bitten, the story spread like wildfire. Within a couple of weeks, two cobras and two bamboo pit vipers had been stoned to death. One of my friends witnessed a cobra having its head cut off with a brick."
The killings broke Huber's heart. "That cobra … has a right to be here. We are the ones cutting down the trees, destroying their habitat to build ours." In response to the snake killings, Huber put up a post on her Facebook wall, pleading for people to treat snakes with respect. She ended with the comment: "While I would never recommend what I've been through, the whole experience has only made me respect snakes more. Be vigilant, yes, vigilantes, no."
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Watch: Hong Kong snake catchers"
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