Golfers playing the tricity greens occasionally stumble upon a shed snake skin. They are wary of venturing close, fearing that the discard’s owner may be lurking and tempted to take a nip at a rippling ankle. The skin is evidence of a snake’s presence, a reptile most often not seen due to its furtive, nocturnal existence. Like a leopard and its revelatory pugmarks, a snake is ghostly, it is here and yet not there.
Freshly-discarded skins of Spectacled cobras are lying to the left of the ladies’ tee box at the 6th hole and another one just ahead of the tee for the 7th hole at the Chandigarh Golf Club. Hawk-eyed caddies spotted the skins and tipped off their sahebs, leading to a jittery surprise at the spot and a mental note for the future not to hit an errant ball into that spot of scrub roughs!
This was followed by banter at the 19th watering hole and a recall of snake anecdotes, the caddies’ wagging tongues being a principal source of such lore. Speculation followed on species identity, whether it was venomous, and cues were the distinctive impression of scales on discarded skin.
Snakes shed periodically as their body outgrows the skin, which does not keep pace with the reptile’s growth. When discarding, the snake inches its way through the old layer until it is completely removed, inside out, much like peeling off one’s sock! What appears uncanny is that the skin is found in one perfect piece (try skinning a Kinnaur apple in one, unbroken peel!). The fragile discard – like crumbling, flaming autumn leaves on winter’s pyre – returns to nourish the soil that had birthed it.
{{/usCountry}}Snakes shed periodically as their body outgrows the skin, which does not keep pace with the reptile’s growth. When discarding, the snake inches its way through the old layer until it is completely removed, inside out, much like peeling off one’s sock! What appears uncanny is that the skin is found in one perfect piece (try skinning a Kinnaur apple in one, unbroken peel!). The fragile discard – like crumbling, flaming autumn leaves on winter’s pyre – returns to nourish the soil that had birthed it.
{{/usCountry}}I sought a perspective from herpetologist and Padma Shri awardee Rom Whitaker. “Since snakes are territorial (have a specific home range), they may indeed return to where they shed their skins. Also, a male snake will follow the scent trail of a female and may show up where a female had shed her skin. There are ancient myths that snakes live forever since they are able to shed their skins and thus ‘renew’ themselves. If you look closely at a shed skin, you will see that even the eye cap is shed, which is like a snake changing its contact lenses!” Whitaker told this writer.
La Vie En Rose
‘Life in happy or rosy hues’, is the title of a French song immortalised by Edith Piaf. But life was hardly happy last week for tricity citizens due to the cold wave. Poor granny’s teeth chattered like a typewriter’s clatter as winds armed with the sting of snows swept down from Himachal Pradesh and beyond.
If you wondered what stoic Himachalis were weathering high above and what unseen devil was causing your discomfort in the plains, here is a picture that could thaw a 1,000 words from the frozen sea within. It was taken on Thursday at a highlander’s cottage garden ringed by orchards of apple and shrouded in half-a-foot of snow in the village of Bahu, Banjar valley (Kullu).
A bunch of velvety vine roses set in snow like rubies glowing in a white jewel case, the photo kindled warm fires in the landscape of the imagination. “Snows came early but are beneficial as they are white manure for apples. The more it snows, the better for apples though our lives get tougher. My garden roses bear snow bravely and will not wilt till such time as their branches snap under repeated snowfall,” Atheist Deepak, the iconoclast photographer, told this writer.
For orchard owners, snow struggles and robust roses evoke a bitter-sweet metaphor: the best roses oft come with the most prickly thorns.
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