Snake menace worries staff, students at OU Arts College

HYDERABAD:  If Osmania University were Hogwarts, then the Arts College building  could well be a contender for being the House of Slytherin. With snakes slithering on the campus round the year, the staff working in the historic edifice are a worried lot. What makes it worse for them are gag orders issued by the university authorities about the scale of regular invasion by snakes into the building.

The latest incident occurred in the Arts College last Thursday, when a large cobra was spotted creeping on PVC pipes carrying electric and other cables, and tacked to the wall, over the entrance to the office of the head of the Political Science department. “So far, we have had cobras in toilets, in classrooms, and offices in the basement of the Arts College building. This has become a regular affair and every time a snake is discovered, it gets scarier. It is just extremely fortunate that no one has been bitten so far,” an Arts College staffer said.

On Thursday, the cobra, first seen crawling on PCV pipes, fell down even as staffers from the Political Science department and others at the Arts College were trying to figure out how to deal with the latest intrusion. “First it was the basement. Now we have snakes even on the first floor of the building,” a department staffer said. “There was a lot of panic among the students and the staff,” the department staffer said.

Another employee from the Political Science department, seeking anonymity, said, “We have been strictly instructed to be tight-lipped on this incident. The snake created panic. Luckily, none of us got harmed. But it could have turned dangerous, had no one noticed it crawling on the pipes over the door of the department head’s office. What if it had fallen on someone and bitten that person?”

The cobra, found on Thursday, was eventually rescued and taken away for release elsewhere. In July this year too, two cobras were found in the Arts College which created panic among the staffers and students.

The Arts College building is surrounded by large swathes of open land, bushes and trees. Some people working in the Arts College said steps must be taken by Osmania University authorities to make the building snake proof.Speaking to Deccan Chronicle, Arts College principal Prof Chinta Ganesh said, “I am familiar with this campus for the past four decades. There has not been a single case of snake bite so far. Lot of precautions have been taken by meshing the ventilators and closing the holes. Despite that, snakes are making their ways into the building. We need to figure out more precautionary ways to stop them from entering the building.”