Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Degei!

I've just been sent something so incredible I have to share it.

Apparently some fellow was digging a trench in Fiji and came across this:


And they took it home to keep as a pet:


 Thank you for sending me this, Kiara.  It's amazing.  In fact, it challenges everything I believe about Fiji.

As far as I've always thought, Fiji doesn't have land snakes.  Sea snakes up the whazoo, sure, and more poisonous than cobras too, only not vicious ... oh, and a poisonous worm too, only again not vicious. Let me see if I can find image.

Can't find anything on youtube on our giant killer-worm, but I did get this image of our lovely seasnake called a dadakalavi:



 Dadakalavis don't ever attack.  They will do anything to avoid confrontation and so naturally everyone is forever teasing them.  Yup, we used to do it as children, horrible vicious little tykes that we were!  There was something very compelling about teasing something with the power to kill you in nano-seconds that WON'T!

However, there is one very famous Fiji story about the American tourist on an Oolooloo Cruise to Nukulau Island catching one to show his wife, and sticking his finger down the snake's throat saying "Look honey, it isn't poi ....!"

Later:

I'm now hearing about an anaconda found in Fiji, on the incredibly beautiful island of Taveuni.  Let me see if I can find image of that too.


I'm thinking this can't possibly be Fiji ... although man # 1 is very definitely and distinctively Fijian.  And I have heard that ever since the price of kava rose skyhigh, Taveuni kava-growers have been importing in red roof tiles, and those are very definitely red roof tiles.

I'm not sure what to think!  Let me search further:

Oh, look.  This one is on youtube too:




Later:

Kiara just wrote to say she asked her dad about where he got the five-headed snake pictures from, and he said "India!"  Apparently the whole thing was a practical joke!  Well, thank heavens for that!  It's strange enough to have a five-headed snake, but to have one turn up in Fiji where they don't have land snakes ... now THAT would be too strange for words!

And now we just need to disprove the anaconda story and I've restored my comfortable and cosy world-view ... so can safely return to my horror film script about the Fijian snake god, Degei, killing off a pile of tabu-breaking teenagers!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

But the five-headed cobra is a shabbily-photoshopped fake, of course. There are many references to it on google, such as http://message.snopes.com/showthread.php?t=58435 and http://mostviralmedia.com/a-cobra-with-5-heads/ and http://www.tienchiu.com/wp-content/gallery/thailand-bangkok/snake_farm_king_cobra.jpg (original photo) and http://skepticdetective.wordpress.com/2010/04/10/five-headed-snake/ and lots more besides. It's also attributed to having been found in Kukke Subramanya in the original emails, not Fiji. x

Anonymous said...

that python is from Malaysia. btw do you know where I can get some kava in HK?

Anonymous said...

It was a hoax posted on the Internet sometime last year. It's an old collection of photos ... Clever person made it up ... The photos were circulated last year... Could be somewhere in Indonesia... Anacondas don't live in Fiji.

Allan

Kiara said...

But the funny thing is alot of people claim that it was in Fiji but when I asked a british firend of mine who resides in Taveuni he doubts it was in Fiji.
But the men all look distinctively fijian as Denise as mentioned.
My dad friend has wife from Taveuni who also claims those pics were taken in Taveuni. I guess we have to ask the locals there.