Farmer bites cobra to death in Nepal

A Nepali farmer who was bitten by
a cobra in his rice paddy field has
killed the snake by repeatedly
biting it in return.
"A snake charmer told me that if a
snake bites you, bite it until it is dead
and nothing will happen to you,"
Mohammed Salmodin told the BBC.
He has now been discharged from
hospital where he was being treated
for the snake bite.
Officials say he will not be charged
because the reptile was not
endangered.
"When I realised that a snake had bit
me, I went home to get a torch and
saw that it was a cobra. So I bit it to
death," he told BBC Nepali's Bikram
Niraula in Biratnagar.
After he bit the snake to death, Mr
Salmodin said that he went about his
daily business as if nothing had
happened. He says he finally agreed
to go to hospital after pressure from
family, neighbours and police.
The incident took place on Tuesday
in a village 200km (125 miles) south-
east of Nepal's capital, Kathmandu.
The snake he killed is reported to
have been the common cobra. Nepal
has a a wide variety of snakes, many
of which are venomous - such as the
cobra.
Estimates suggest that there are
20,000 cases of snake bite in Nepal a
year, most of them in the Terai
southern plains, causing about 1,000
deaths, the AFP news agency reports.