Brass Replicas Replace 70,000 Snakes at India Festival

Brass replicas replaced real snakes during a popular Hindu festival in Bombay on Friday, a day after police confiscated 70,000 starving cobras and rock pythons that were to be forced to drink milk.

About 50,000 snakes die each year during the Nagpanchami festival, when people offer milk, congealed butter and sweetened rice to starving snakes, according to estimates from the World Wide Fund for Nature-India. Snakes do not drink milk and do not normally eat butter or rice.

After the snake confiscation, devotees who usually feed teaspoons of milk to the snakes instead symbolically fed the brass replicas, United News of India reported.

In the days before the festival, snake handlers puncture poisonous snakes’ venom glands, pull out the fangs and sew their mouths shut so that they will be harmless and hungry for the special food, the Fund said. The forced feeding results in diarrhea or chokes snakes to death when the milk gets into their lungs, animal rights activists say.

During the past few years, teams of wildlife officials and volunteers have been swooping down on snake charmers who display snakes outside railway stations and temples. The snake charmers encourage passersby to throw money or place milk near the snakes during the days leading up to the festival.

The snake is considered sacred in India, and clay idols of snakes are commonly seen in temples.