Animals

Escaped King Cobra Crawls Back to Swedish Terrarium

The venomous 7-foot snake called "Houdini," returned back to its enclosure after escaping for over a week into the insulation located between two nearby walls.

A Swedish zoo was partially shut down after a king cobra staged an impressive escape from its enclosure.
(Photo by HENRIK MONTGOMERY/TT News Agency/AFP via Getty Images)

A venomous 7-foot king cobra that escaped from its home in a Swedish zoo has returned back home by itself, bringing a happy ending to over a week-long disappearance saga.

“Houdini, as we named him, has crawled back into his terrarium,” CEO Jonas Wahlstrom of the Skansen Aquarium told the Swedish public broadcaster SVT on Sunday.

The deadly snake, whose official name is Sir Vass (Sir Hiss), escaped on Oct. 22 via a light fixture in the ceiling of its glass enclosure at the aquarium. The enclosure is part of the zoo at the Skansen open-air museum and park on Stockholm’s Djurgarden island.

As a result of an intensive search with X-ray machines, “Houdini” was located earlier this week in a confined space near the terrarium in the insulation between two walls.

Holes were drilled into the walls where the snake was hiding but the cobra disappeared from the view of the X-ray cameras early Sunday. It turned out the snake had given up its freedom ride and crawled back to its terrarium.

“It was too stressful for Houdini with all the holes in the walls, so he wanted to go home again,” Wahlstrom told SVT.

The park said the snake wouldn’t have survived the cold climate if had gotten out of the building.

King cobras can grow up to 18 feet long and mainly live in India, Indonesia and the Philippines.

Copyright AP - Associated Press
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