You have to love stories like this one. Tom Lasseter of the Sydney Morning Herald is reporting the following story (September 25, 2010) which has been in the news on and off this passed week.
XIANLING VILLAGE, China: Cai Yong thought it would be a good idea to buy 3000 cobra eggs and then hatch the snakes at an abandoned school building in homemade cages of plywood, brick and netting.
The local businessman's plan to make money by selling cobra venom for traditional medicine fell apart when more than 160 of the serpents slithered through a hole in the wall and created bedlam in remote Xianling.
Starting at the beginning of this month, cobras were spotted in outhouse toilets, kitchens, front yards and the mah-jong parlour in the tiny farming village in Qijiang county in Chongqing municipality, south-western China.
''I saw one in the bathroom,'' said Zhang Suli, 47, the wife of a corn and rice farmer. ''I was scared, and I started screaming.''
The Mid-Autumn Festival holiday this week, when Chinese celebrate the season's harvest moon, has not been an auspicious one for the people of Xianling.
First, there was the cobras-gone-wild story, which veered between slapstick and terror. Then an apparent government clampdown followed, in which officials declared that most of the snakes had been captured and all was well, assertions that many locals did not believe.
Guan Xinyu said local officials were more interested in damping down any sign of trouble than in rounding up the snakes. Like several others interviewed in the area, Mr Guan said that while the 1500-plus cobras that did not escape had been taken away, he had not seen anyone trying to catch the ones that got away.
''The government is scared of people panicking because these snakes are dangerous,'' he said.
''I know they didn't catch all the snakes.''
Officials recently delivered snakebite serum to the village - though only the breeder has been hurt so far - and have given lectures about cobras.
The government of the nearest town, Shijiao, issued a notice last week detailing how the snakes got loose and declaring almost all of them had been caught.
Which left Wei Yuanxiang, 56, with one pressing question: ''The government says there aren't any cobras left, so why are people still seeing them?
''The government just wants to get this matter finished,'' he said.
Mr Wei's neighbour, Luo Lizhong, said he saw a cobra last Saturday, several days after the village was given the all-clear. Pointing at a spade leaning against the wall - everyone in the area seems to have one at the ready these days - Mr Luo said he slapped it on the ground when he spotted the snake darting across his tool shed.
The episode is a reminder that no problem or locale is too remote for the Communist Party's efforts to enforce its notion of a ''harmonious society'' in which there is no social upset. Even when it comes to cobras in the bathroom.