In Bangkok we saw the queen sponsored snake farm. It is a large complex near a hospital. The mission of the royal endeavor charges the undertaker with farming anti venom and educating the people of thailand about snakes. The anti venom farming involves milking snakes and injecting horses. Creepy but necessary. The education part involves keeping 134 different snakes, maintaining a museum, and putting on a twice daily snake show. The shows are not as necessary as insuring supplies of anti venom are available, but they are is in large part what makes the availability of anti venom so essential.
Just after the start of the show we noticed that our narrator had only three fingers on one of his hands. He also mentioned that all of the snake handlers had been bitten at least twice (there were 4 handlers) and that they returned to handling snakes because they loved their jobs.
Sure, all part of the act, right? That is what I was thinking until after the show and we were watching the bite first aid interactive display in the museum. They had footage of the three finger guy getting bit at the show and another guy (a dvm) giving testomial about being bit at the show too.
The snakes in the show were all poisonus (except the boa at the end) and the highlight was a guy being fast enough to catch a king cobra with his bare hands. Tough finding work in thailand, although I did see a waiter position advertised outside of a hotel we passed the other day.
Since nothing really tops a guy catching a single king cobra, a second guy came out with two regular cobras carried by the tail in each hand. He spent a few minutes goading them into striking at him prior to some boring educational crap about banded kraits and leaf vipers. Night active show snakes are not as much fun to watch as are daytime show snakes.
Still guy number 1 and guy number 2 have my vote for the cover of lunatic magazine this month. I would never go back to snake handling after being invenomated. The bite footage we saw both here and at the rattlesnake museum in new mexico show what an insult to the flesh a snake bite is. Google an image if you are unfamiliar. It will make you want to puke. ~ Paul
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