This morning I was early to class… but not early enough to catch a small slim black snake slithering across one of the long tables in our amphi. However, some classmates and our professor were at the scene.
According to one eyewitness, the snake was so thin, it was easily mistaken for a laptop cable. Another eyewitness said it had red and black markings. However, our professor has experience in jungles, he apparently could ‘smell’ the presence of a snake, and said it wasn’t poisonous because it emitted a smell; non-poisonous snakes do that to compensate for their lack of venom power.
He called maintenance, who apparently did not seem very surprised about it (has this happened before???). They used a bamboo pole to hit the snake’s head repeatedly until it died, then it was lifted up and disposed of.
I started wondering which nook and cranny the snake slithered in from. Our doors? The air con vents? Some unseen crack? Surely not the large glass windows because they’re sealed in… I theorised that maybe it came here to lay eggs and more snakes would appear soon! Ssssssssss!
One classmate, who is a mother of two young children, had an opposite reaction from the rest of us. She said the snake was obviously a baby, and its mummy was probably looking for it along with its siblings, and she felt sorry it was dead. I was like “!!!!!!!!!” but didn’t hesitate to frighten another more squeamish female classmate that maybe its family would miss it and come to our amphi to look for it! Other classmates who came later refused to believe there was a snake, until more of us chimed in, along with the professor. One guy was told that the snake had been on the part of the table where he sat … fortunately he wasn’t squeamish (at least in public).
So anyway, that was the exciting event that was experienced by only a few early birds … who most certainly got their worm.
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