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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 -- "Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher. "Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature. -from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers" Visit the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com |
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