Two-headed snake found by Hubei shop owner
Staff Reporter 2013-09-28 09:07
The two-headed snake. (Photo/CNS)
A man who owns a shop at Yichang Sanxia Airport in central China's Hubei province on Tuesday found a small snake with two heads, one at each end. The snake would have been killed as an evil omen if it had been found in ancient China, but in this instant the man released it after taking a picture, according to our Chinese-language sister paper Want Daily.
The snake, around one meter in length, snuck into the shop after heavy rain on Tuesday. The owner, surnamed Yang, caught the snake and was about to throw it out of the shop when he saw that the snake, which had gray skin and red stripes on its belly, had two heads. The two mouths on its heads opened at the same time, Yang said.
Yang kept the snake overnight and finding that it was sluggish took a picture and let it go. The two heads both headed to the same direction as it slithered away, said Yang.
In ancient China, two-headed snakes were considered a portent of doom. Sunshu Ao, China's first known hydraulic engineer, who lived during Eastern Zhou Dynasty (771-256 BCE), killed a two-headed snake when he was a child as he had heard that people who come across them would die. He picked up a large stone to kill the snake and buried its body deep in the ground.
After he returned home, his mother was concerned why he was upset and crying. He told her that he killed the two-headed snake because others would die if they saw it too. He believed that he himself would shortly die and would never see his mother again.
