If you’re ever 12 hours deep into a rice wine slizzerfest on the banks of a rain-swollen Mekong with a rowdy clowder of shitfaced mates, and a cobra swims past minding its own business, and y’all decide it’s a good idea to catch the bugger so you can sell it later at the market to buy even more rice wine and some of those hot pickled clam things, here are some tips you might consider.
I can’t give you any sage advice on how to catch the cobra while hammered and up to your armpits in one of the world’s landmark waterways. Really buddy, no one can. But once you’ve taken off your pants and tied up the legs and put the snake in and then tied up the waist so it can’t escape, it’s probably going to be livid. For sure it will have its teeth pointed directly at you, dripping with neurotoxins. Best not to taunt it then, no matter how hilarious smacking funny old Mr Hissy Pants with your Angry Bird flip flop is. And when you and the lads cosy up to the ‘I love you, mate’ stage of the evening, resist the urge to give the snake a cuddle too. Sure, it’s been through a lot tonight. We all have. If needs must, give it a cheers from a safe distance. But honestly it’s not your best friend forever. It won’t take care of your wife and kids should anything happen to you. Like getting bitten to death by a fucking cobra.
Unlike the infamous figment about a local lion maiming 42 midgets in a ring fight, this trouser snake story did actually happen – and right here in CharmingVille. I’m reminded of it since we had that monsoonal shit soup barrelling through our streets the other week. Snakes ache for a robust, rat-thick body of water. Unless your house is ankle deep in racist limes or you’ve got a bunch of mongooses, you’re up shit creek in the viper department.
Or not, apparently, if you’re a single gal or guy looking for love. According to my personal oracle of Cambodianness, aka The Hubster, snakes in a dream mean someone likes you. Snakes chasing after you means they really, really want to have sex with you. Snakes in real life means you’re already doing it like a boss. In the last three weeks my friend has had three snakes invade her actual kitchen. She’s a good sweet girl, but her parents have grounded her just in case.
I personally haven’t seen any snakes in my dreams for a while, or real life for that matter, unless you count the lame puffy one the Sofitel Brunch Clown made me last Sunday. It was a consolation prize following the untimely demise of Pootle, the balloon dog he’d fashioned for me earlier. I loved that crazy Koonsian pooch. But, like those lavishly inebriated sods with the cobra, it’s amazing what a heroically boozy afternoon by the river can make a person do. While my Life Partner distracted the carvery chef, I Instagrammed little Pootle next to the suckling pig like they were old mates from back on the farm days. But as I leant in to give Piglet’s little tail an extra twirl for the money shot it all went downhill, though mercifully quickly. In my rush to art direct the delightful tableau, I knocked poor Pootle too close to the heat lamp. Like a hot pink canine Icarus he exploded all over the gravy station with a loud bang that caused half a dozen tooth-sucking bodyguards to draw their service revolvers and push their designated generals face down in their foie. Every cloud has a silver lining, I guess.
But back to those other legless reptiles. I don’t have too many issues with serpents per se as long as they don’t eat my rabbit. If I walk into Marital HQ one day and there’s a fucking smug python flat out on the couch with a dislocated jaw and a huge lump halfway down, I’m not joking: there’ll be hell to pay.