Never The Twain....

"There's no way we could survive if there were more fires than snakes."
"When people build houses in their [snake] habitat, of course they will seek a dry spot in people's houses because they can't go anywhere else."
"Stories of snakes invading homes always sound scary, but as long as you don’t provoke them, they won’t hurt you. There are only a few cases where snakes come into people’s houses and hurt them."
Prayul Krongyos, deputy director, Bangkok Fire and Rescue Department, Thailand

King cobras can be found in and near Bangkok because there is an abundance of rat snakes, a favorite prey.  Thailand Snakes

As the world's population grows it continues to displace other animals from their traditional natural habitat. And then humans begin to regard these creatures as nuisances. The thought is that the animals are intruding on human settlements through their unwanted presence. Rarely do we stop to consider that what is considered to belong to us is also theirs. The territorial imperative that motivates humans to go to war against one another, based on instincts of survival, is seen in other animals that cannot wage war with humans, but attempt to live among us nonetheless.

They must make themselves inconspicuous to do so; to rarely show themselves, to live surreptitiously out of sight and thus out of mind. In the Western world squirrels, raccoons, skunks, porcupines, opossums and other similar creatures like foxes, muskrats, beaver and deer delight us when we see them, as long as they aren't competitive with us for space and geography. We tolerate them in areas of marshland and forest that are unsuitable to build human habitat or when laws are installed to protect their habitat when feasible.

These warm-blooded mammals are rarely seen as a threat to our own existence. They can be considered pests when we are annoyed at their presence in the 'wrong' places, and wolves and coyotes have an unfortunate reputation among humans who fear them, but when it comes to alligators and snakes most people shrink back in fear and loathing. In more exotic locales on earth, like Thailand there is a proliferation of animals that people have no wish to share their homes with; snakes.

In Thailand's capital, Bangkok, the main airport Suvarnabhumi was built over a swamp, which was named Cobra Swamp. The geographic area where Bangkok was built was once a marshy paradise for reptiles on the Chao Phraya River delta. Snakes are gregarious creatures that often coil together in dry pits to spend months in hibernation, hundreds linked together.

And when it rains and their homes are flooded they go looking for haven elsewhere. That haven could be peoples' homes. And for some strange reason the snakes may turn up in peoples' toilets....

(Image: K-kae Kae/Facebook)

Which -- imagine it -- isn't much fun when you're unaware, seated on the toilet and suddenly feel a sharp pain because you've been bitten by a snake. One woman had this experience when a 2.5-metre python emerged from her toilet when she happened to be using it and rushed for treatment to her local hospital for the punctures over a centimetre deep in her thigh. The snake was captured, and a week later yet another showed up in the same toilet.

Fortunately for the snakes, the man tasked in the city with removing the snakes from homes has an enlightened attitude toward the snakes' presence. As far as he is concerned, they are harmless, and in fact useful, in eliminating rats and other pests. His fire department, called upon by residents, responds to all calls to remove snakes and of late has been even busier than usual. Some 31,801 calls for the removal of snakes has kept them busy this year, an increase from last year's calls.

One recent day saw 173 snake invasion calls, vastly more than the five fire alarms received on the very same day. And though the fire department keeps track of the number of calls for help with snake removal they receive, no one tracks the numbers of incidents where homeowners look after their own snake removals, thousands of which are killed or removed by residents, or by volunteer snake handlers.

Bangkok's fire department called on to remove snakes from peoples' homes.  AP

When the firefighters remove snakes they take them to a wildlife centre from where they are released to the wild. A humane response to an age-old aversion of people to the presence of snakes born of fear of what they imagine an encounter might result in. The reason, it seems, for the proliferation of snakes entering peoples' homes is that even by the usual standards of weather patterns, Bangkok has seen an increase in heavy rains, where snakes are forced to seek refuge indoors.

When flooding occurs, the streets seem to turn into snake highways when the snakes are forced from their hideouts and desperately swim in search of higher ground. The city has a population of over 8.2 million people. And the population continues to grow, so as it does more of the surrounding geography is required to build homes, taking up formerly wild lands, resulting as well in a greater number of encounters with snakes.

Sunday, Panarat Chaiyaboon points to the downstairs toilet in her house where reticulated pythons slithered up to bite her in the bottom. Left, the python that bit her July 3.