The kitchen cabinet was the last place the family expected to find a snake.

On a rainy morning last July, residents of a third-floor apartment in Delhi's East of Kailash opened a cabinet to discover a three-foot-long Indian rat snake curled up quietly inside. The yellow-and-black-banded reptile had likely sought shelter indoors after days of relentless rain.

Instead of panicking, the family called for help.

A trained rescue team from Wildlife SOS arrived and safely relocated the non-venomous snake.

It was far from an isolated incident.

Throughout last year's monsoon, rescue teams across India responded to snakes turning up in unexpected places.

A spectacled cobra was rescued from beside a gas cylinder at Jawaharlal Nehru University's canteen. Another Indian rat snake was safely removed from Prime Minister Narendra Modi's residence. In Agra alone, rescuers attended more than 100 snake rescue calls between June and mid-July, including 34 Indian rat snakes and 23 spectacled cobras.

Even in Kashmir, snakes were reported inside car bonnets and chicken coops.

Every monsoon, similar stories emerge from across the country. They may seem unusual, but they point to a simple reality: when heavy rain transforms the landscape, snakes are forced to move too.

Sometimes, a house is just higher ground

For most of the year, snakes live in burrows, termite mounds, rock crevices, or beneath thick vegetation. When heavy rain floods these shelters, they have little choice but to look for dry, safe places to wait out the weather.

Homes, garages, sheds, and storerooms often provide exactly that.

Their movement has little to do with people.

Snakes do not enter homes to hunt........

© The Better India