A HAZARDOUS LIVING

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23008, 8 April 1938, Page 4

A HAZARDOUS LIVING

WOMEN WHO CATCH SNAKES ,f — Women perform some odd jobs in various, parts of the world, but few are so strange as that of women who live in Hercegovina, for they literally, depend for their lives on poisonous snakes. It is their job to trick and trap the giant, wriggling snakes, the lightest nip from which moans instant death. Without this job the atony, barren districts would mean starvation, or compel them, to emigrate. As it is, their strange occupation is very lucrative. _ ' There is no banging on the head and an easy gathering of tho dead_ reptile and collecting money for the job. Instead, these dealers of agonising death must bo captured alive, carefully boxed, and hurried to the collecting agent. Women, tho prime movers in this "poison trade," are aided by their menfolk and children, for almost the first toy a child learns to play with is tho little cleft stick by which they will depend for their existence when thev grow up. With this stick the snake is deftly pinioned behind tho head and dexterously dropped into the box. Another method adopted in this hazardous task is setting curious scissor-likf traps similar to mouse traps. For every snake captured in good poison condition tho chemical agency pays the equivalent of 2s, and there is no limit to the number a person may thus market. These snakes are despatched alive to Germany in special boxes, and the first process for extracting tho precious fluid for anti-snake serum begins, bringing life to those to ■whom death would otlierwiso have been a certainty but for the dangerous work of hundreds of patient, alert women of the barren mountain sides in peaceiul Hercegovina.