On 10th of July we had pleasure to be part of very special event. With Sakaerat Conservation and Snake Education Team and Sakaerat Environmental Research Station we hosted over 90 people from Rescue Teams. These people help rural communities in first aid, medical services, snake rescues and others.

Workshops started with presentation about snake ecology and their importance in ecosystems.

What makes me really happy is thet they treated it seriously… Quite few of them was even taking notes!!

In between lectures we invited guests to our field laboratory, where we presented them several snake species  including Siamese Cat Snake Boiga siamensis and Wolf Snake Lycodon laoensis. 

After exciting time with snakes we had nice meal. On the right side of the picture below there is Mr. Mee. He is one of main characters responsible for such a high interest in our snake handling training.  Currently he is working on bringing here more teams from across the Thailand. Good guy!

After lectures there was time for some practice. Here I am teaching how to set up bagging system properly.

Some of the students took workshop less seriously than others … 🙂

After sorting out baggers was time for snake handling presentations. We started with non venomous snakes like: 2m Oriental Rat Snake Ptyas mucosa and 12kg and 3 m Burmese Python Python bivittatus. Interesting fact about python is that this snake was capture night before the workshop and actually it is individual that we rescue from net almost two years before. On picture below me and Manuel are assisting volunteers with  handling big girl.

After non venomous snakes came time for “hot” stuff. First Curt and Mee shown how to work with Green Pit Vipers.

Last attraction of “snake show” was presentation on how to work with Monocled Cobra Naja kaouthia. In first place we presented new technique that me and Curt learned on our trip to India. 

Idea is to use snake natural instinct to shelter in stress situations. We used PVC pipe with bag attached to one end. Rocks around pipe help to stabilize it and imitate a natural shelter. Next step was to present snake to the set up.

It is really good technique that works almost every time. Now we are looking forward to individual teams visiting us for an intensive snake handling training. Whole day was very demanding and exciting. Thank you all for your input! We made to nationwide news!