Ajay Giri juggles an eight-foot king cobra in one hand and a snake hook in the other. The cobra’s forked tongue flicks. Its tail, coiled around Giri’s left arm, twitches restlessly. Hay, huts, fields, and farmers are all scorched under the afternoon sun at Heggodu, an agricultural village bordering the Agumbe Reserve Forest. Here, deep within India’s mountainous Western Ghats, Giri has come to rescue the king. “King cobras are shy. They don’t attack humans unless provoked,” says Giri, the 35-year-old field director of the Agumbe Rainforest Research Station. The…
