Snakes and things

We had a bit of excitement in the office today when someone came running inside to tell us there was a snake outside.  Always up for an excuse for a diversion we all hurried out to see a fairly large snake of somewhere between 1.5 and 2 metres slithering around outside the office, trying to find someplace to hide.  It stuck it's head into a small drainage hole leading out of the office to try to get out of our way and the general concensus being that we would rather keep it out of the office one of the men took hold of a long stick and wedged it into the gap to stop the snake getting in any further.  We then had the problem of large snake half in and half out of the office.  Of course it had gone into the most inaccessible part of the building, a store-room that's rammed full of all the things that one day might be useful, along with a few musa (Oriya for mouse).  Maybe the snake was after the mice?  Unfortunately as many snakes round here are poisonous the safest solution was taken and the snake is no more.

I've heard that there's interesting wildlife like bears and tigers in Orissa but there is very little groundcover around here, most of the treecover long since having disappeared so the population is prety low.  However, Mike told us that there was a brown bear spotted wandering around near his NGO office yesterday, just a few kilometres from my office.  When I told one of my colleagues about this he told me that there had been one hanging around just outside the SPREAD office door last summer.  Why do I never have my camera to hand when I need it?  However, Margaret had hers with her so here they are:

I don't know why I'm smiling, it was a sad ending for the snake.  My human companion is Ajaya, one of the accountants

I got up this morning and went onto the roof to retrieve last night's washing and found a creature in residence on my dupatta.  It's rather lovely but fortunately flew off when I was trying to work out what to do with it

And on my way to the office a few days ago I was intrigued to see a lorry loaded with lumps of granite (the material used to build the foundations) turning into a field with a vacant building plot on it, followed by a group of women dressed in their best silk saris with flowers in their hair walking (barefoot of course) behind it.  What was that all about?  Some sort of ceremony to bless the new building plot?  I'm told that all new houses are blessed before people can live in them so maybe it's something along those lines?