By the third week of May the phone is quiet. The occasional rat snake in a backyard, a Trinket misidentified as something dangerous, a homeowner who just wants reassurance more than a rescue. The dry months have their own pace, and it is a slow one.

Then the first proper downpour hits. The kind that fills the storm drains for the first time in months and resets the whole soundscape of the city. The phone rhythm changes within forty-eight hours. June 2025 ran to 22 rescues, my highest single month in four years.

The four-year archive going into this season sits at 384, with the 200th venomous one logged in February. The citywide scale dwarfs that. BBMP’s volunteer team alone has fielded over 400 snake calls in a single fortnight during past monsoons. And June is when last year’s eggs hatch, so it isn’t just adults moving in the rain, it’s a fresh cohort arriving. The numbers are the residue. The phone is the weather.

What changes:

The hour. Dry-month calls cluster in the early evening, around the time gardeners finish up. In monsoon the cluster moves later. Post-dinner, post-news, post the moment someone steps onto the back balcony to check whether the rain has stopped. Eleven pm calls become normal. So do six am ones, when the watchman on his morning round finds a coil under a parked scooter.

The opening line. Dry months: “There’s a snake in our compound, can you come?” Monsoon months: “Sir, please, my mother is screaming, it came up through the bathroom drain.” The drain line returns every year. So does the basement parking. So does the ground-floor utility area where the cook opens the door at six-thirty and finds something she did not expect.

The video. Almost every call now begins on WhatsApp. A blurry ten-second clip filmed from a safe distance, forwarded by someone in the group who knows someone who knows a rescuer. The video is mostly useless for identification, but it has become the etiquette. You watch it, you reply with a species guess, you ask for an address.

The species spread. Rat snakes dominate the dry months. They are confident, common, and visible. Once the rains begin, the list diversifies. Spectacled Cobras start showing up around gardens. Russell’s Vipers turn up against green patches. Common Kraits, almost never reported in summer, begin appearing in the post-midnight slot, found inside houses where a door has been left slightly open for the breeze.

The babies. Russell’s Vipers give live birth, often twenty or more at a time. Cobras and Kraits hatch from clutches laid weeks earlier. By July the city is full of pencil-thin snakes that look harmless and aren’t. A neonate viper has the same venom as its parent, just less of it. People mistake them for worms or lizard tails and reach down. They shouldn’t.

The repeats. One community will call three times in a fortnight. Same building, often the same wing. The geography of a monsoon doesn’t move much. The snakes follow the water and the rodents follow the snakes, or the other way around, depending on who you ask.

The misses. In dry months you usually arrive and find the animal more or less where it was reported. In monsoon, half the calls end with the snake already gone by the time the gate opens. It came in with the water, it left with the water. The caller stays anxious. Another “not found.” The next call is fifteen minutes away.

The pace. The wider rescuer network gets patchy in monsoon. People take leave from rescuing the way the rest of the city takes leave from outdoor plans. The ones who stay on get busier by default. Two calls a day is unremarkable. Three is a Tuesday. You sit down on a Sunday to log entries in batches and realise the week has already eaten seven.

This is usually where I’d stop. But if you’re reading this in a Bangalore ground floor with the rains starting, a few things worth knowing.

Look before you step. Storerooms, basement parking, bathroom corners, shoes left outside, the gap behind the washing machine. Snakes don’t want to meet you. They want the rat they can smell, or a dry corner away from the water. Most bites happen when someone walks into one by accident.

If you see one, stay still. Give it room to leave. Don’t poke it with a stick, don’t try to corner it, don’t try to kill it. Most snakebites in this country happen during attempted handling, not random encounters. Photograph from a safe distance if you can. The clearer the photo, the faster the rescuer can plan the call. If the picture is good, ID it yourself – https://snakeid.shiftingradius.com

Don’t underestimate the small ones. A baby Russell’s Viper is the size of a pencil and carries the same venom as the adult. Same for Cobras and Kraits. The small ones are not training versions. They’re harder to spot, easier to step on, and just as capable of putting you in a hospital.

Call a known rescuer. keep eyes on the snake until help arrives. If you lose sight of it, that’s the worst outcome, because then everyone in the building is anxious for weeks.

Today the phone has rung twice already. The season is probably back.