I have heard, seen and learned many things in life, but I had never heard of a cobra, Chhor Vyechh, abandoning its partner and fleeing on its wedding night, as has just happened at Skansen in Stockholm. Sweden's Skansen is the oldest open-air museum in the world, where historic Swedish buildings stand alongside displays and chances to see animals.

Most of the buildings and farmsteads at Skansen date from the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Besides the collection of historic buildings there are shops, cafés, a fine church, a zoo and an aquarium that delight and entertain visitors, children included.

Some days ago a 2.5-metre cobra named Chhor Vyechh escaped from its terrarium. A surveillance camera showed the king cobra getting out through a gap in a lamp fitting in the ceiling. The search for the king cobra went on in earnest for almost a week.

It happened last Saturday. The venomous king cobra left its terrarium, and an intensive search began. The authorities said they had recently switched to low-energy lamps. The bulbs they used before were very hot, and snakes that went near them would burn themselves.

Because the new lamp was not hot, the snake was able to escape between the lamp and the bulb's wires. The king cobra escaped after it had been put there in an attempt to mate it with another snake at Skansen. I had heard of people fleeing the bridal chamber, the writer says, but this time I learned that snakes can too.

Staff have now cordoned off an area of the suspended ceiling where the snake is, but it has not been trapped. Staff said they were working hard to recover it. After the search, it has now reportedly been found in a spot near the terrarium.

According to Swedish television, the snake's location was traced with the help of special cameras and X-ray equipment from the customs office. The equipment is normally used to track narcotics.

The amount of money and effort spent over the past seven days searching for one small snake, and the headlines in the media and all kinds of news, finally compelled me to write about it, the writer says. When something happens to an animal or bird, this nation highlights it so much that it seems nothing untoward ever happens in Sweden.

Yet this year probably 45 people have died in various shootings or fights, he writes. And there is little concern over how many people are dying in the war between Ukraine and Russia, though everyone condemns it; but the snake that fled on its wedding night is on everyone's lips, a huge event that had to be written about. Why the king cobra left its beloved partner and fled remains a mystery in my mind, he adds.

The writer is Rahman Mridha, former director at Pfizer, writing from Sweden.

Source: Jagonews24. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.