A sneaky little snake crawled into the motorbike of a Nakhon Ratchasima province elementary school teacher today and simply refused to leave — until she got down her knees and prayed to it that is.
Local officials found out about the predicament this morning when they received a call from a 34-year-old teacher, Namfon Promrak, of Kulno elementary school.
After trying everything to remove the snake — including partially disassembling the motorbike, the snake appeared to be staying put, reported T News.
After 40 minutes of unsuccessful attempts at snake extraction, the superstitious Namfon finally grabbed nine joss sticks, got down on her knees, pressed her palms together, and began to pray to the keelback snake, offering up a sign of respect. It’s not really as strange as you might think, given that many Thai people believe snakes are spiritual animals.
Regardless, it actually worked. The elusive 50-centimeter-long snake popped out soon after the incense was lit and was later released back into its natural habitat.
Having heard of the “magic” incident, flocks of locals showed up in the school parking lot to take pictures of the bike’s license plate in order to buy lottery tickets with the same “lucky” numbers.
We probably could have predicted that, as there is an ancient belief here that receiving a visit by a snake means a huge fortune is coming.
Of course, while many Thais perceive the incident as a mystical blessing, there could (obviously) be another less-spiritual explanation.
Snakes hate smoke.
In fact, it is one of the internet’s top suggestions of homemade natural repellents.
So was the snake just fed up by the teacher’s joss sticks? Far be it from us to spoil all the fun. We’ll leave it up to her own interpretation.
This is not the first “magical snake” case this month. Just last week, a very large king cobra was caught at a restaurant in southern Nakhon Si Thammarat over the Mother’s Day holiday. As scary as that might sound, the restaurant’s owner considered it a blessing.
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