Forget Hollywood, Singapore has snakes on a car and it’s awesome

SINGAPORE has car-attacking snakes. That is it. Our boring reputation is ruined. First, Taylor Swift. Then deep purple. And now: auto-sweeping pythons. At this rate we need a week’s worth of Coldplay gigs or we risk losing the boring label forever.

Honestly, have you seen the pictures? There is a large, gray python with black and yellow markings, leaping into the air in pursuit of a fleeing tire. According to reports, the incident happened on April 27 in Teck Whye Lane because the sluggish python had recently eaten and did not appreciate being disturbed. And that’s what sets Singaporean reptiles apart from Singaporean mammals. Snakes attack cars while they are digesting a meal. People will attack cars as they consume traffic on the Causeway.

The last time Singapore witnessed a living creature attacking a car was when that woman mistook herself for the Hulk and tried to stop a vehicle from driving across the Causeway, which seemed a bit futile. Cars never drive on the Causeway.

But the tire-chasing snake is the first of several nature stories with a happy ending. The python did not meet its maker, but the wonderful people of the Singapore Police Force and Animal Concerns Research & Education Society (ACRES). Police directed traffic away from the fat python. ACRES arrived and rescued the python. And Netflix has commissioned a shooting script about the python.

Speaking of shooting, such goodwill and friendliness towards our native species was not always so commonplace. In those halcyon days of intolerance, I vividly remember watching the sun set behind the old Specialists’ Shopping Center as eager members of the Singapore Gun Club gathered in the adjacent car park on Orchard Road to head off passing crows to blow. In the 1990s, there was nothing like the soothing sounds of giddy Saturday shoppers, ice cream cart vendors and gunshots.

(And before retired members of the Singapore Gun Club get in touch to say that no shotguns were used, but rifles with 0.5 stethoscopes and R2-D2 round nose bullets, I can only say I was too busy with avoiding high flying bird parts for care.)

In the past, culling was the first option

But in the last century, monkeys were for culling, crocodiles for shoes, otters for Malaysian waters, dogs for the rich, cats for no one, noisy birds for hunting and songbirds for caging. In Singapore’s crooked, urban ecosystem, every creature knew where it stood until it fell from a branch with gunshot wounds.

Now police are blocking off roads and calling in an animal rescue service to ensure the safety of a happy python who, acting like a Friday night drunk on a full stomach, charges up to a Honda Fit and tells the car to try if he thinks it’s hard enough. The snake’s trust is matched only by the empathy of its rescuers. It’s fantastic.

But not an isolated incident. That same week, several wildlife photographers joyfully captured the birth of a Raffles’ banded langur – the first baby of the critically endangered species spotted in the wild this year. According to primatologist and local hero Dr Andie Ang, there are now 76 individuals. In the last century, the native animal was on the verge of extinction. Now he plays like a typical Singaporean, which is to say not very much.

But it’s still better than nothing and Raffles’ banded langurs have fewer mating requirements. They just ask for tall trees and some greenery, unlike a BTO with a balcony, a baby bonus and a babysitter.

Singapore even built the Eco-Link@BKE to help langurs – and other species – find each other, stay safe and make babies. One suspects that if HDB built an eco-link between every residential area and the maternity ward of KK Hospital, it still wouldn’t make Singaporeans reproduce faster.

Delicate balancing act for a city in nature

But it’s worth taking a moment to consider how far Singapore has come as an empathetic country. If a society can be measured by the way it treats all its citizens, then a nation that diverts traffic for a python, builds a bridge for wildlife, and fosters an entire community of wildlife watchers must be one in the moving in the right direction.

Of course, for some it will never be fast enough (this writer included). The Punggol Digital District, to take a well-known example, will create thousands of jobs. But the destruction of the forest has also displaced wild boars and hundreds of long-tailed macaques. Many of them ended up, confused and disoriented, in neighboring residential areas, in areas too close for comfort. Far too many of them are gone.

Every corner of Singapore has a variation on the Punggol Digital District story: Clementi, Kranji, Tengah and Turf City are just the most recent examples. The delicate balancing act of creating a unique city in nature, one that David Attenborough champions as a template for the rest of the world to follow, is a huge challenge. But this time, a healthy number of Singaporeans appear to be on the side of coexistence.

In the same week as the rescued python and baby langur, a new book titled Singapore Terrestrial Conservation Plan was launched by scientists and conservationists. It is a nationwide call to arms, essentially asking to protect the forest fragments left in Mandai and Lentor and provide a green buffer for our wildlife.

Housing will always be a priority, but the collective effort required to save a single snake, document a newborn langur and create a comprehensive conservation plan suggests that priorities are also evolving. Previously it felt like our default position was to cull. Now the intention is to preserve it where possible. That’s certainly an empathetic shift in thinking to be proud of.

Singapore can make coexistence a reality. We can share. Of course, there will always be those who are unable to share, especially the speeding knuckleheads on our roads. But if our traffic police need help, I know a python.

Neil Humphreys is an award-winning football writer and bestselling author, who has covered the English Premier League since 2000 and written 28 books.

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