Dogs really are man’s best friend — or as an incident in Taitung County’s Luyeh Township (鹿野) late last week showed, a woman’s best friend as well.
A 74-year-old Luyeh resident surnamed Chen (陳) said she was watching TV about 8pm on Friday when her dog, named Heizai (黑仔), began barking non-stop at something outside.
It was the kind of bark Heizai makes when fighting and not when it is barking at people, Chen said, so she got up and went to see what was happening.
She discovered a snake trying to squeeze itself under the metal draw-down doors in the kitchen.
While snakes were not uncommon near her home, she is very afraid of them — to the point they make her weak in the knees — and Heizai seemed to sense her fear and ran to bite the snake, she said.
Heizai tried to bite the snake’s tail, but the snake was as thick as an adult’s arm and managed to free itself, Chen said.
Heizai attacked the snake three more times before it was able to kill the snake.
Chen said that she called neighbors to help her dispose of the snake and they threw it down into the valley.
She said her son had given her Heizai on Lunar New Year last year to keep her company while he and his siblings were at work.
“Heizai is wonderful and usually follows me around when I am working in the field,” Chen said, adding that he had been a great companion during her recent enforced inactivity after having a joint replacement operation.
“It was a good thing that Heizai was so alert and dutiful,” Chen said, adding that she had given the dog an entire can of beef as a reward.
She said she asked her children to search the house and surroundings on Saturday for more snakes, but they did not find any.
Chen’s son said he had given Heizai to his mother because snakes were often spotted near the house, and that he had planned to also give her a cat, but his children were afraid the cat would not be able to protect their grandmother and would just end up becoming a meal for a snake.
He said he suspected the snakes were coming from the waterway belonging to the local irrigation association, but that despite multiple complaints the association had done nothing to resolve the problem.
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