STOCKHOLM — A Swedish zoo has been partially shut down after a king cobra staged an
impressive escape from its enclosure at the weekend, with staff on Monday still
searching for the venomous vagrant.
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The snake, named
Sir Vas (Sir Hiss), escaped on Saturday through a lamp fixture in a terrarium
and was believed to be somewhere in an inner ceiling.
He had only been
brought to the zoo a few days earlier.
The snake has now
been renamed Houdini after the famed escape artist, said Jonas Wahlstrom,
director of the Skansen Aquarium.
Staff have spread
out flour to try and track the slithery fugitive and sticky traps have been
deployed.
They have also
brought in special cameras designed to inspect sewage pipes, in order to search
the nooks and crannies out of reach.
The terrarium has
housed king cobras for about 15 years, but it only took the new tenant a few
days to find a way out, Wahlstrom told AFP.
“It turned out to
be clever,” he joked.
He explained that
the escaped snake had an advantage over previous tenants: staff had recently
replaced the lamp at the top of the enclosure with a low-energy bulb.
“The old light
was so hot that no snake wanted to get close,” Wahlstrom said. “But now it’s
not hot at all and the new king cobra discovered this and wedged its head in
between the lightbulb and the light fixture and managed to push itself out.”
A visitor managed
to capture the escape on video, where a distressed person can be heard asking:
“Is it safe to be here?”
A staff member
calmly replied: “No, but we’re working on it.”
The reptile
section was subsequently evacuated and has been closed until the escaped cobra
is captured. Wahlstrom said there was no danger of it escaping outside.
“It won’t get
out, but hypothetically it’s also so cold outside that it would doze off
immediately,” Wahlstrom said. He also stressed that king cobras are typically
quite calm and unlikely to attack.
King cobras,
originally from South and Southeast Asia, are the world’s longest venomous
snake. They mainly prey on other snakes,
but their bites can be fatal to humans if untreated.
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