Being a snake lover, I thought this might be of interest to you .
It was a response posted to rec.gardens newsgroup
Paul


paghat wrote:

In article , (Cynthia
Donahey) wrote:

In an old book on Indian gardening, there was a brief reference to
leaving
a bowl of milk out for cobras. It seem to be partially religious,
partially blackmail. Has anyone (in areas where there are snakes) done
this or heard anything about this?

Can all snakes drink milk?

A North American myth is that the milksnake is so-named because it
attaches itself to cows' udders & suckles milk. Dairymen would leave milk
out for the milksnakes to keep them from bothering the cattle, & to
encourage them to stick around & eat the mice in the barn. In reality of
course snakes would become ill if they had no access to water & were
forced to resort to drinking bowls of milk. I've never seen a satisfactory
explanation for how this more-idiotic-than-average myth got started, but
it's a very old belief.

It's a remarkable coincidence that this absurd belief exists also in India
and Bengal. Because the cobra is sacred to the goddesses Sitala, Mariamme,
and Kali, & to the god Vishnu, offerings of milk, bananas, & flowers
(including giant Jack-in-the-Pulpits because they look like cobras) are
left at shrines or in back yards for cobras. Milk is left out in bowls or
poured down holes thought to be inhabited by snakes around temples & in
private gardens, hoping snakes will drink it & bring the devottee good
luck. On the festival of Nag Panchmai, cobras are captured & deprived of
water so that they are forced to drink milk & this is supposed to be to be
so pleasing to the snakes that they won't bite people, or if they do the
venom won't kill, & the snakes will even intervene with the Goddess to
keep anyone form getting diseases or the plague.

As with religion in the west, religion is often at least 90% a business
scam, & many small-time business crooks provide dehydrated snakes to
willing buyers who want to give them milk. The majority of these cobras
never recover because so abused before milk is even offered, then they get
sick for having nothing to drink but milk. If Vishnu or Sitala happen
actually to exist, I'd think they'd smite such worshippers with all manner
of plagues for being so gawadamn stupid, since the ill health of these
snakes is not difficult to see. But there are a few activists in India
trying to stop this widespread practice, because they believe the snakes
really are sacred & such well-intended but ultimately murderous treatment
of cobras should stop. Superstition, alas, is impervious to education, &
so deeply incorporated into the daily life & regional economy that it will
never cease.

Here's a page about the Nag Panchami festival:
http://www.aryabhatt.com/fast_fair_f...20Panchami.htm

(Funny that this page about the Cobra Festival gets saddled with badly
targetted instant-ads at the bottom of the page, which on my visit just
now consisted of two ads for the same phoney snake-repellant, exactly the
opposite of what worshippers at the Nag Panchami festival would be
seeking. Happily the products are 100% bogus anyway so no snake would ever
be discouraged.

(Snake-Away's active ingredients are napthalene (same as mothballs, but at
delute levels supposedly not so toxic for pets, kids, & other animals) &
suphur. The manufacturer makes all sorts of crazy claims for this useless
crap including that it is "university tested and proven" with ability to
repell 100% of garter snakes, 83% of rattlesnakes, & varying percentages
of other snakes -- the percentages come right out of the manufacturer's
ass. The apparently imaginary "univerisity" citation is always unspecific
so cannot be tracked down & by "university tested" they apparently mean
the "inventor" of the useless product proving his own invention worked,
though no independent study has been able to come to the same manifestly
irreproducible results. The inventor of the completely disproven product
is herpetologist Harvey Lillywhite who of course did not publish this
so-called study in any peer-reviewed journal nor even in one of the
dubious non-peer-reviewed journals which will occasionally accept faux
research on a vanity-press basis.

(No one at the University of Florida is aware of any this alleged "ten
year study" being conducted there, though if the manufacturer is
believable at all he may have trumped up a non-scientific report for the
EPA of unpublished, un-peer-reviewed, unsubstatiated "findings" later
shown in published & authentically independent data to have been false.
Yet the manufacturer has managed to get ad-hype published in amateur
herpetological bulletins & reprinted by vendor clients all over the web.

(The manufacturer very carefully avoids promoting any of the several
independent studies of their product because ACTUAL independent research
conducted by Marsh, 1993; McCoid et al, 1991 & 1993; & Ferraro 1995
across-the-board concluded "Dr T's Snake-Away was not successful in
repelling snakes" & was "totally ineffective in repelling brown tree
snakes" It was tested on garter snakes, gopher snakes, & rattlesnakes &
had no repellant value, neither did the active ingredients used separately
effect snake behavior.

(If Lillywhite's unpublished & unavailable article were available we could
probably see what was wrong with the protocol that resulted in
irreproducible results, or we might even find that the rephrasing
manufacturer just lied, but from multiple studies since Lillywhite's
alleged findings Snake-a-way has been very definitivelyh proven to be
worthless. Yet Dr T representatives frequently show up wherever they are
condemned to post all their usual enormous fat lies & misrepresentations &
pseudoscientific jabberings about mucking up snakes' sense of smell in the
Jacobson organ, all contrary to reality.)

-paghat the ratgirl