Bangkok’s 199 Hotline has been receiving a call every 15 minutes from members of the public asking for help in dealing with snakes which have entered their homes, averaging more than 100 cases a day.
There are also calls for help to get rid of monitor lizards, wasps and hornets.
According to the hotline centre, rescue workers responding to distress calls have a more than 90% success rate in catching the snakes, most of them being pythons and cobras. Once the snakes are caught, they are usually sent to the Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation to be released back into the wild.
One rescue worker cited a recent case in which a woman posted, on her Facebook page, details of a huge python with its head dangling from a large tree in a lane next to the Second City Hall in the Din Daeng area.
Alongkorn Mahannop, a veterinarian and senior advisor to the Zoological Park Organisation of Thailand, said that Bangkok has been home to snakes for a long time and their numbers increase because there are plenty of rodents and pets for them to eat and because Thai people do not eat snake meat “which means that the snakes do not have enemies” he said.
He also said that most of the snakes found in Bangkok are pythons.
