XIANLING VILLAGE, China — Local businessman Cai Yong thought it would be a good idea to buy 3,000 cobra eggs and then hatch the snakes at an abandoned school building in homemade cages of plywood, brick and netting.
It wasn’t.
Cai’s plan to make money by selling cobra venom for traditional Chinese medicine fell apart when more than 160 of the serpents slithered through a hole in the wall and threw the remote village of Xianling into bedlam.
Starting at the beginning of this month, cobras were spotted in outhouse toilets, kitchens, front yards and the mah-jongg parlor in this speck of a farming community in southwestern China.
An apparent government clampdown followed, in which officials declared that most of the snakes had been captured and all was well, assertions that many locals didn’t believe.
Guan Xinyu said that while the 1,500-plus cobras that didn’t escape were hauled off, he hadn’t seen anyone trying to catch the ones that got away.
“The government says there aren’t any cobras left, so why are people still seeing them,” a villager asked.
Officials did deliver snakebite serum to the village. Only the breeder has been hurt so far.
