The Creepy Times Issue 5 newsletter by Rahul Alvares

The editor and the site designer strike a casual pose with a python. (This picture is meant to draw immense humour, as the pose likens to what Goan village heroes look like when they send their photographs to the newspaper clicked after they have bashed up the snake senseless. Notice our solemn faces!)

WILD LIFE CELEBRITY

Aaron Lobo: Aaron caught his first snake when he was eight. The snake was a Russell’s viper (a deadly venomous snake) which Aaron gingerly picked up by the tail and brought home in a plastic bag only to be promptly killed by his shocked grandfather! His first pet – a toad! Along came fish, turtles and practically every snake found in Goa. Some of the snakes he even managed to breed like the Checkered keelback and the Sand Boa. Two Pythons grew up with him, and from babies they remained till they were well over six feet. Aaron released them in the end as he never managed to find enough food to satisfy their voracious appetites. By the time Aaron was in his teens he was already an able diver as well. One of his passions in addition to reptiles is studying Marine life.

In 2001 he stood first at the all India Wildlife exam, and then migrated to spent two years in Dehra Dhun where he completed his post graduation at the prestigious Wildlife Institute of India. For his project he worked on the impact of trawlers on sea snakes in Goa. An enjoyable though tiresome exercise, I myself went with him once as we spent twelve hours on a trawl boat from four in the morning to six in the evening counting the drowned sea snakes caught every time the fishing nets were pulled up. Aaron completed over fifty such trips in his six month project period! His project had been so meticulously produced and well researched that he was selected to present it at the University of Cambridge in England. The project won him the first place among other students who represented forty counties from all over the world.

Aarons advice to someone joining the ‘wild line’ is to stick with dedication.
‘Because you can be sure that there won’t be much money involved’ he smiles sincerely.
Get the Buzz on Aaron Lobo at: 2412265 9822135019
Aaron can also be email at [email protected]

Aaron handing a Gaar (Monitor Lizard).

The monitor was later skinned and eaten...Just kiddin'

Hi friends!

I hope and pray that you are receiving my newsletters regularly. Bringing out the creepy times is so much fun for me! My head is bursting with more and more ideas every day.

This week we have started the ‘wild celebrity’ feature in the newsletter. These persons are actually still not celebrities, but they do a great deal of good work - for which I respect them very much…..and what’s the hey I gotta have some fun!
We feature Aaron in this issue. Aaron is a snake expert, and has done some amazing work on sea snakes. He also has a very good knowledge of birds, fish, insect, trees and practically all wildlife. He has been promoted to the Board of Directors …hee hee… and he will be ready to answer any of your wildest questions – the answers of which we will run from time to time in the forthcoming issues.

Featured Article:

The Best Pets

Snakes make the best pets. At least better than cats and dogs I can assure you. Cats and dogs can be very affectionate, dogs especially are very faithful as well.

But my favourite pets have always been reptiles. One of my first reptile pets was a female Red Eared turtle (popularly called sliders) which I had received as a parting present from the Madras Crocodile Bank. I still remember vividly the first bite I got from her—one of the nastiest bites I ever received from animal or human! First was my excruciating pain (the turtle took a small chunk off my thumb) and then my sheer joy; now at last I had a bite from a turtle to complete my ‘reptile bite list’. I had already been bitten by a baby crocodile, a lizard and plenty of non-poisonous snakes. The turtle was the last of the four groups that reptiles consist of.

I also remember distinctly the turtle tumbling out of my backpack (my mistake leaving the zipper slightly open as a breathing hole for her), and making for the door on the bus to Goa from Bangalore. It was night and I wouldn’t have noticed her getaway if it hadn’t been for a sweet old lady who tapped me on the shoulder and remarked, “Son, I think it’s your water bottle.” I quickly retrieved the scrambling turtle, relieved that no one had noticed what it was in reality instead.

This Red Eared turtle lived with me for several years. She was housed in a small artificial pond of ours, and ate anything as long as it was non-vegetarian. Funniest and most entertaining was giving her chicken guts. On Sundays my mother would give me the bowel contents of the chickens once she had cleaned them, and I would feed them to my turtle .She would gulp them down hungrily, slicing the smooth intestines with her boat shaped jaws clamping together swiftly and smoothly underwater. In a minute she’d have swallowed the spaghetti like intestines and then she would stiffen for an instant, her Gollum like nasty face contorted with a pained sorry expression. Suddenly with an involuntary spasm and a jerk of her neck inwards, she would release two streams of cloudy undigested grain straight from her upturned nostrils, her eyes closed in bliss like a pot smoker, savouring the slow exit of intoxicating fumes through her horny nose.

My turtle I had to release in the end, because I had to leave Goa for a while. I left her in a local pond with plenty of fishes to feed on. Unfortunately a year later, she swallowed the hook of a fisherman who recognised her as mine and brought her back to me. It was very sad to see her suffering. The hook was deep down in her throat, so she wouldn’t eat anything at all. I took her to a vet, who tried to operate on her but during the surgery she died.

Snakes I have kept on several occasions .One of them (a buffstriped keelback) even laid eight eggs. Sadly none of these hatched. One small problem however with keeping snakes as pets is that they will only eat live food, and finding frogs, toads and mice proved to be quite a problem in the end. One young cobra I had kept ate eleven small frogs in a single sitting. The next day with a lot of difficulty I managed to find another three more, but when these were devoured even faster by the hungry cobra, I was forced to let him go.

The advantages of having reptiles as pets are manifold. First of all they never smell. Dogs need a bath ever so often. Snakes have no hair, their body is smooth, (not slimy) hence they always remain clean. Unlike dogs you never need to brush snakes for that shiny attractive look. Every month and a half they shed their old skin to expose the brand new one underneath!

Dogs and cats can be very noisy at times. Two of our dogs used to shit in the house during the monsoons and if you live in a flat you know the trouble cleaning their fur off the cushions, picking their ticks, and talking them for walks.

Reptiles don’t need walks. A snake well fed will sit as quiet as a mouse. They don’t waste their precious energy chasing around from one room to another. Most reptiles need to be fed once or twice a week at the most. Compare this with the greedy looks and stomach aches that dogs will give you at every meal you sit down to eat.

Reptiles can’t spread rabies. And let’s not forget allergies! How many people are there that are allergic (I mean physically, not mentally) to snakes? And then very important, a house which announces ‘Beware of Snakes’ is even less likely to invite burglars, than one that says ‘Beware of Dogs’.

Yes, snakes do bite, but so would any new animal not accustomed to humans. And just like dogs and cats, snakes can also be tamed—to an extent where even a child could handle one without any fear of being bitten.

Of course the law doesn’t allow snakes to be kept as pets. But that doesn’t mean one should treat them as enemies instead. As for me, reptiles have always occupied a very special place in my heart, and I can say the same would be true for you as well if you ever gave them the chance!