Cobra in Arts College cellar shakes up OU
Lab attendant records chilling encounter with the 5-ft snake
A five-feet cobra in the Osmania University’s Arts College, a heritage building that houses, among others, the departments of journalism and psychology, caused some alarm on Monday evening. The encounter with the snake was recorded by a lab attendant in the washroom in the cellar of the Arts College where the two departments are located.
The video shows the reptile hissing, spreading its hood, and then crawling into the Indianstyle toilet and disappearing, from where it probably would have come in the first place, the lab attendant said.
“It was pretty late in the evening when I went to the washroom and did not notice the snake’s presence until I came out and started washing my hands. It was then that I heard the hissing behind me. It was a very close encounter, and a very scary one at that,” the
staffer recalled.
It is not the first time that such an incident has taken place at the varsity, which has a thickly wooded campus, and particularly in Arts College building’s cellar. “It is quite common to see snakes, not just in the washrooms and toilets but also in classrooms and staff offices in the basement. Last year, during the floods, we had snakes entering the building even as rainwater flooded some of the rooms,” a university staffer said.
Due to the way the building was constructed, the windows in the cellar that are placed at level of the ground outside and the old drainage system, the snake issue has been persistent in the college. It is also very common to see large centipedes and other insects going about their way in the cellar.
A staff member who wished to not be identified said that the situation has been more difficult for them in the cellar classrooms than those departments that are on the first and second floors of the building.
"We have to be alert about snakes and reptiles entering from nooks and corners of the building. There are labs, classrooms, washrooms — any open drainage can allow passage of poisonous reptiles into the building," the staffer said.
"As per my experience, these snakes enter the building twice a year," said Dr Ch Srinivasulu, senior assistant professor at the department of zoology. "I mostly coordinate with the catching of the snakes on the premises. It is due to the vast expanse and the location of the university that these reptiles are found in this area. The most we can do is catch them as they appear," he said.
Dr. Srinivasulu also addressed the concerns over the unavailability of anti-venom at the health centre of the university, despite the frequent visits of reptiles inside the building premises. He said that it was not advisable to keep anti-venom at the university and that staff at nearby hospitals like Durgabai Deshmukh Hospital among others were trained in administering the injection.
OU College of Arts Principal Prof. Chinta Ganesh, who took over the position recently, said that the issue was brought to his notice and he had instructed the officials concerned to look into the matter to ensure safety and security of students and staff.