Bhubaneswar: Around 40 newborn babies of Checkered Keelback snake, locally known as Dhanda, were rescued from a house on the outskirts on Bhubaneswar on Saturday.
The snake babies were spotted by Lavani Pradhan in the bathroom of his house at Gadakana village on the outskirts of Bhubaneswar in the morning. Alarmed by the snakes, he killed them and threw outside. Suspecting that there may be more snake babies under the bathroom tiles, he informed the Snake Helpline.
On arriving at the house, Purnachandra Das, a member of the Snake Helpline, asked Lavani to point out the exact spot where he had found the snake babies. On closer observation, Purna found that there was a very narrow gap between two tiles in the middle of the bathroom. On tapping the tiles, there was hollow sound and he could know that the mother snake has laid eggs there.
40 Checkered Keelback Snake Babies Rescued From Private Residence In Bhubaneswar – YouTube
With the permission of the house owner, Purna and another Snake Helpline member Asish Behera dug up the bathroom tiles. The digging revealed a lot of snake babies crawling around. There were also some snake eggs.
Purna and Asish picked up the Checkered Keelback babies and kept those in a bucket. They also found 5 eggs which were in final stage of getting hatched. On counting, they found 40 snake babies. The babies also came out of the eggs after three hours. But the mother snake was nowhere to be found.
After the end of entire operation that lasted for more than 5 hours, all the rescued snake babies were released in a natural habitat.
Subhendu Mallik, general secretary, Snake Helpline said, “Checkered keelback snakes can lay up to 90 eggs as per the size of the female. The female lays eggs and guards those till the incubation process is over. However, it leaves the eggs 1-2 days just before hatching. The babies come out tearing the egg shells from inside. The mother abandons the eggs by instinct because it had remained starved for 60 days guarding the eggs. If it does not abandon the eggs, there is possibility that it may eat own babies after hatching out of starvation for a long time.”
