the wacky wombat weblog

After neglecting this lil’ space for so long, I guess it’s about time for me to post something interesting.  So here’s a story of something that has never happened to me before. Till now.

A couple of weeks ago, we had a shoot for our FYP video. Just before we started, we sat at the void deck and had lunch, and watched a cat that was prowling in the grass patch next to the building.

A cute black and white cat, and it obviously had its hunter/predator mode on. It was all alert, staring at something in front of it, ready to pounce. Probably a butterfly, or a lizard. Just another fun afternoon play thing for the kitty.

Then suddenly, out of nowhere, we heard a sharp hiss. Sssss! And a snake shot out of the grass, upright and within inches of the cat! And it’s not just your average garden variety green snake. It was a damn cobra!! I’ve never had to identify a cobra, but judging from what I remember from the TV documentaries (dark coloured, hooded head…) yup, definitely a cobra!

At this point, all of us went: OMG, snake!!

And the cat just sat there and stared back at the cobra. What a dumb cat.

The snake began slithering forward inch by inch, and the stupid cat could only step backwards. Until it was finally backed up against a wall.

And all of us went: OMG, cat! Run! The snake is going to get you! But of course, the cat just froze there, having a staring competition with the cobra. We’re not sure what we were supposd to do, since we can’t very well kill the snake, and it was inches away from just leaping at the cat and setting its venomous fangs upon it.

So we decided to scare the snake away, and hopefully let the cat the chance to slip away. But we had nothing, except our boom stick (to attach the boom mike to). And so we used it. Not on the snake of course. Just hit the grass patch nearby to distract it. And luckily, its concentration on the cat was broken and it slithered away.

Phew. Luckily. But then right after that, we saw the cat combing through the grass patch, obviously looking for that snake. >.<

Anyways, we had to call someone to report about this. I mean, we can’t just let a cobra run loose in a HDB block right? There were kids running past after that! (Plus, our filming location was supposed to be right next to the grass patch). But not knowing who to call, we actually called the police.

Well, 2 officers actually showed up to find the snake. But it was long gone and in hiding (or gone swimming in the canal) by then. And our shoot had to start, snake or no. Thankfully it didn’t appear again.

So that’s the first time I saw a snake out in the “wild”, and on the set of my shoot. eek.

(Kinda reminds me of that episode of Studio 60 when 1 snake went loose beneath the studio, and they sent a ferret down to hunt it. But we have no ferrets here.) :p