At the monkey temple a cobra

The other day, at the Monkey Temple, i was given a quick lesson in the fleeting nature of life. Monkey Temple is a Buddist stupa and monastery on a prominent hill outside Kathmandu.

(they call them hills, we would call it a mountain)

I had been snapping photos of the stupa (large hat shaped structure containing relics either of Buddha or a bodhisatva, which is very roughly speaking a Buddhist saint) and of the monkeys that are everywhere, when a Nepalese man jumped into my arms.
Ive been inNew York too long, probablybecause my first thougt was the ruse of distraction teams of pickpockets use.
This had a different, desperate edge though, and the man was dancing around and squealing, never taking his eyes off a spot behind me. I turned to look and there in the sunlight, on the rottenold stone paving, was a cobra. It's very distict, even when small, like this one.

I spent a few months painting murals in the reptile house at the Bronx Zoo, and have seen what cobras look like at feeding time. Lets just say it makes everyone involved very ALERT.

This one was perhaps twicwe as big around as a quarter, and was sort of probing and striking the air in front of him. The man and I looked at each other.

"Dude," I said, "you're alive." We exchanged an awkward man h u g, which apparently knows no cultural boundaries, as a croud gathered and marveled at the snake, ,which eventually lost interest and went back into the florescent green foliage. As the monkeys chattered away in the fig trees overhead, one of the guys in the crowd explained to me how glad they were, not have all escaped being bit, but because they considered cobras to be symbols of protection.

I learned later that Buddhist temples are a great place to see animals, because there is an injection against killing, so fairly helpless things. Ike monkeys, deer and yes even small cobras have learned to live where it is safe.

In the US, the monks would have been sued for allowing unsafe conditions to persist.