Swedish snake escapes zoo for a week, then turns itself in

A highly deadly king cobra snake measuring in at seven feet (2.2 meters) long escaped from its terrarium in a Swedish zoo, only to return a week later, earning himself an appropriate moniker and alleviating the concern of its concerned caretakers who have been searching for him since his escape.

The CEO of the Skansen Aquarium, Jonas Wahlstrom told the Swedish public broadcaster SVT on Sunday, “Houdini, as we named him, has crawled back into his terrarium.”

The venomous reptile, previously known as Sir Vass (Hiss), escaped from his enclosure on the 22nd of October through a light fixture located in the ceiling of his glass enclosure. His home in the aquarium is part of the Djurgarden Island open-air museum and zoo in the Skansen Park in Stockholm.

A deadly 7-foot snake is back in his enclosure in a Swedish zoo, having taken it upon himself to return home after a week on the lam. https://t.co/LnNZRAdpo6

— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) October 30, 2022

Houdini was found after a long and intensive search involving a week’s worth of man-hours and an X-ray machine. The snake was located late last week in an enclosed and isolated space near his terrarium deep in the walls within the structure’s insulation.

The initial plan to recover Sir Hiss involved drilling a series of holes in the walls behind which he was found, but once they got started, the snake disappeared from the X-ray camera's view.

In a bizarre twist, the snake got tired of his disappearing act and returned itself to its original enclosure from which it had escaped.

Wahlstrom told SVT, “It was too stressful for Houdini with all the holes in the walls, so he wanted to go home again.”

According to park officials, the snake would not have survived had it escaped the building and ventured into the outside world, away from the controlled climate of its home.

King Cobras like Sir Hiss are typically indigenous to India, Indonesia, and the Philippines.