The Empty Hood

Hannah detected the leaping frog 30 feet away. Not much of a distance if your body is an impressive 14 feet long. Moving with a swiftness that made lightening jealous, she barred her proteroglyph dentition and her fixed fangs struck poor froggy like a hypodermic needle.

According to the laws of science, by now 400 mg of venom should have entered little froggy’s central nervous system leaving it with blurred vision, severe pain, vertigo, drowsiness and an easy-to-gulp paralysis.

However, all froggy felt was bewilderment, ‘Dear god, why am I not dead?’ Hannah’s brain worked as fast as her body and in a blinding flash of illumination she realised her venom did not work. Before froggy could tom-tom this news around the forest, she lifted the tip of her tail and beat poor froggy’s brains out.

The bloody mess, though she had caused it caused a lack of appetite. There were bigger problems to solve. Hannah slunk into a secret cave. There she lie still waiting for her prey. Almost immediately, a friendly rat popped in to see if there were any other ratties around. He was feeling a bit playful.

Hannah’s tail merged with the shadows and snuck up on ratty. As soon as it reached the rat’s bum, it began coiling itself around the rat’s torso. Ratty squeaked and squeaked but when he looked into Hannah’s eyes, his voice died and his brain tried to compute what he saw. He had thought he was being eaten by a python but here was a cobra behaving in a strange way. Why didn’t this sadist just use her deadly venom and be done with it?

She raised her hood and struck, three, four, five times. The rat continued to stare at her with beady eyes. Damn! Hannah had lost her poison. She didn’t know how but it had happened. She squeezed ratty’s body till he asphyxiated, then she settled down to chew and think.

From then on Hannah hunted for food covertly. Always making sure nobody was around, she would coil her body around the victim and kill it. If she was ever threatened, she would spread her magnificent hood and hissssss. That seemed to keep most of her enemies away.

This deception continued for twenty years and finally Hannah was burnt out. Being secretive is exhausting not just for the mind but for the body too. She realised she was getting too old and weak to squeeze a victim to death. Her poison, which could kill an elephant was a long forgotten memory of her youth.

She approached two younger cobras (Identical twins, who liked to rap their hisses). The wondered why this ancient dodger was creeping towards them. They raised their hoods slightly ready to strike in case granny wanted to make them her lunch.

She bent her head to indicate she came in peace, told them her tale and begged for a favour that would set her free. The young cobras complied and bit her to death, taking turns to give the lethal blow.

As a mark of respect they didn’t eat her. They slithered away to tell the jungle the tale of this extraordinary cobra, who had the courage to live without that which kept her alive.

Moral: You don’t have to advertise your weakness



Hoopoe is drawn by the fabulous Bijoy Venugopal. You can find more of his wonderful stuff here bijoyvenugopal.com