STOCKHOLM —
Zoo staff in Sweden tracked down an escaped king cobra, only for it to vanish a
second time after its daring initial departure, authorities said Friday.
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The snake, named
Sir Vas (Sir Hiss), slithered off last weekend through a lamp fixture in a
terrarium he had been brought to a few days earlier at the Skansen Aquarium in
Stockholm.
Following his
disappearing act, the venomous vagrant was renamed Houdini — in honor of the
famed escape artist.
The zoo’s
reptile section has been closed since then, and staff spread out flour on the
floor and deployed sticky traps to try and trace and capture the scaly
fugitive.
Customs agents
were also asked to assist in the search, with X-ray machines and special
cameras normally used to detect illicit narcotics.
On Friday, it
looked like the jig was up for the escaped elapid when it was found hiding
inside a wall.
But the crafty
serpent dodged capture once more.
“Sir Vas located
— and gone again!” Swedish Customs said in a statement posted on social media.
The terrarium in
question had housed king cobras for about 15 years, Jonas Wahlstrom, director
of the
Skansen Aquarium, told AFP earlier in the week.
But the clever
new tenant took advantage of the fact that staff had recently replaced the lamp
at the top of the enclosure with a low-energy bulb.
Unlike previous lamps it
was not hot enough to scare the snake away, and it managed to wedge its head
between the bulb and the light fixture and slither its way out.
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