STOCKHOLM — After a week of
evading staff and sophisticated customs equipment in the nooks and crannies of
a
Stockholm aquarium, a king cobra returned to its enclosure on its own,
officials said on Sunday.
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"We got him back!" the Skansen
Aquarium said in a statement Sunday.
The snake, named Sir Vas (Sir Hiss),
slithered off last weekend through a lamp fixture in a terrarium where he had
been brought to a few days earlier.
Following the disappearing act, the venomous
vagrant was renamed Houdini, in honor of the famed human escape artist.
The aquarium's reptile section was closed
off, and staff spread flour and deployed sticky traps to try and capture the
scaly fugitive.
When that didn't work, the aquarium deployed
special cameras and got help from Swedish customs agents who used handheld
X-ray machines.
The sneaky serpent was finally found to be
hiding inside an interior wall.
"The clever Houdini however moved
several times when we sawed open several holes to get to him," the
aquarium said.
At one point, the runaway reptile even stuck
his head out of a hatch.
"Then he realized that customs agents
were in the building and quickly moved to the next hiding spot," the zoo
said, adding that "you can run from customs, but you can't hide."
Overnight Saturday/Sunday, the snake
apparently decided to give up the life of an outlaw.
"It turned out that he had given up and
crawled back to his safe and warm home," the aquarium said.
While the reptile section was again open to
the public, Houdini has been placed under "house arrest" for observation
and would not be on view to visitors until Monday, it said.
King cobras, originally from South and
Southeast Asia, are the world's longest venomous snakes.
They mainly prey on other snakes but their
bites can be fatal to humans if untreated.
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