"The snake" by Jim Luster 1965

Ken Villiger and I went to visit the Snake Farm.  I can't remember the real name of the place but it wasn't the tourist spot.  this was off the beaten path and was a small zoo featuring South East Asia reptiles. We parked our motorcycles and went wondering around the grounds.  We eventually found the owner, a small, elderly man trying to hand feed a very rare small yellow cobra. He had his hand in the aquarium like cage and was batting a small chick around trying to get the snake to strike and eat the chick. While he is playing with the snake, he is talking to us and really not paying that much attention to what is going on in the cage. He doesn’t get bit and the snake eventually takes the chick. He is a very entertaining man and tells us some great stories about his business. Basically, he supplies reptiles to zoos all over the world. And, he had pictures to prove it. He had a brother in the Chang Mai area that supplied him with reptiles from up north. He told us the story about a Laotian village head-man that wanted his brother to come into Laos and take their “God” away. It seems the “God” was a very large snake that was eating more chickens and pigs than the villagers could afford. The brother wanted more information so he asked the head-man just how big was this snake. The head-man pointed at the brother’s jeep tire and said the snake was as big around as the tire.  This was probably an exaggeration. But if the snake was as big as the jeep wheel, it would have been a monster. The man that owned the farm was mulling over whether to finance his brother’s safari into Laos to get the snake. I never did find out what happened. During the course of our guided tour we stopped by a female Burmese Python’s cage. Her eggs had just hatched the day before and he wanted to see how they were doing. He offered us one of the hatchlings for a few dollars, maybe five or ten. I bought the snake with no idea of where I was going to keep it or how I was going to feed it. Oh, did I mention that Villiger and I had been drinking? We weren’t drunk but our power of reasoning had been seriously diminished. Ken told me I could keep the snake at his house which was in an area across the street from the Capitol Hotel.  We didn’t have a cage in which to keep the snake and Ken volunteers to find one. I have to find a place to keep the snake until we get a cage. So, I take it back to Seri Court to my room, which I shared with two guys that worked days. TA types I think. I worked swings. I empty one of two klong jars that were kept full of tap water in the bathroom and put the snake inside the jar. I go to sleep. Apparently the roomies find the snake in the klong jar in the morning and tell the first SGT.  I am rudely awakened in the morning by 1SGT Meadows and SFC Al Sensley (sp).  I’m sleeping on my belly with my feet overhanging the end of the bed. Meadows kicks my feet so hard my head banged off of the head board. I’m awake. He is having a screaming shit fit about the snake.&  I try to calm him down by telling him the snake is harmless and I’m just keeping it in the room until I get a cage. He’s not having any of it. I’ve got to get the snake out of the room “Right effin now”.  While he’s having his rant, I reach into the klong jar and pick the snake up and hold it. I thought he might calm down when he saw how little and harmless the snake was, (the snake was about the size of a full grown garden or garter snake) wrong again wonder boy. He gets even more worked up. I take to snake over to Ken’s house and we put it in one of his klong jars until we can locate a proper cage. Ken’s teelock isn’t coming on having a snake in the house. She isn’t saying too much about it but she sure wasn’t happy. Now another problem raises its head (pun intended). The snake needs to be fed. Because it’s so small, whatever it eats has to be small also. Ken and I have some beer as we discuss what to get the snake for food. It has to be something that is alive. We eventually arrive at mice. So where do we get mice. The Sunday Market of course, where else? I hop on my bike and find some black and white mice in a nice little wooden cage with a treadmill. A few baht latter and I’m on the bike headed back to Ken’s pad. I bring the mice into the house and I think I’ve done good.  Wrong again wonder boy.  It seems that these mice are special. They bring good luck to the house. Molly, Ken’s squeeze is now happy because we’ve brought something into the house to counteract the bad spirits the snake brings into the house. When I take one of the mice and put it into the klong jar, Molly has a spell. While the snake is eyeing the mouse, Molly is out in the back yard offering fruit and burning incense sticks at the back yard spirit house.  The mice were just fine until they turned into snake food. Eventually I ran out of mice. Every time the snake craps it has to be fed.  Somehow or other I heard of a hatchery on the way to Bhan Ken, where we worked. It was by the Thai Bronzeware showroom on the road we traveled everyday between Seri Court and work. I ride out on my motorcycle and find a young man that speaks limited English. I tell him I want to buy a chick. He starts showing me some chicks that I know are too large for the snake to eat.  He keeps showing me smaller and smaller chicks until we get to some that are only a few days old. This is what I’m looking for. In the tray he pulls out of the incubator is a chick with one leg and one wing. Very small. That’s the one for me. He sells it to me for one Baht. I put it in a paper lunch bag, get on the bike and head back to Villiger’s pad. The snake now has a proper cage and I put the chick into the cage and the snake goes after it and eats it. The snake goes back to sleep. This scene is repeated three or four times, when the old man that owns the incubator shop wants to talk to me. He looks like Ho Chi Min. He is sitting at a table in the back of the ramada all the incubators are located under. He is reading a newspaper and smoking a cigarette in a small curved pipe. He looks like a rag picker. But he speaks perfect English, with a British accent. He says “Will you please tell me what you are doing with these deformed chickens”. I tell them they’re for a small snake. He looks at me and says “GIs” shakes his head and goes back to reading his paper. He’s done with me and I’m dismissed. A lot of the GI’s who were shacking were getting robbed. I used to walk up and down the street Ken’s house was on with the snake wrapped around my neck. Used to scare the living shit out of the locals but we never had a problem with Khamoys , mice or even rats. Eventually it was time for me to PCS and I took the snake to an open field out by the airport and turned it loose.