As the sun rose and the temperatures soared across the country this May, India’s wildlife faced the relentless grip of the summer heat. The snakes sought shelter in cool, dark corners of human habitats, birds grew weak from dehydration mid-flight, and reptiles wandered into kitchens and courtyards in search of shelter and water. For the Wildlife SOS Rapid Response Units, this meant a season of early mornings and late evenings, racing against the clock, and the harsh climate, to answer each and every distress call.
May was a reminder that as the heat rises, so does the ingenuity it takes to keep both people and animals safe.
JAMMU & KASHMIR (J&K)
Some calls to the Wildlife SOS helpline are routine rescues our experts conduct, while others defy the norm for the team that has handled more than many challenging rescues. The case we wish to highlight falls under the latter.
It began as an ordinary Srinagar morning in the old city’s Kathi Darwaza locality, in the heart of the area of downtown. A family was settling into their veranda with their morning tea around 11 AM. when something streaked across the sky above their home: a black kite, its vision locked in a hunt that played out daily over the city’s rooftops. Kites carrying their prey snakes in their talons is not an unusual sight in Kashmir, but what happened next was.
Right above the house, the kite lost its grip and the family watched, tea forgotten, as a snake dropped out of the sky directly into their garden. The snake hit the ground and did what any creature in its position would do: make a quick escape. It slithered across the garden towards the back of the veranda, where construction was underway for a new store room, and vanished into one of the gaps that was uncomfortably close to the kitchen window.
The family wasted no time calling the Wildlife SOS helpline and within half an hour, the Rapid Response Unit was on site, working through a structure full of holes and hiding places with no clear way to know exactly where the snake had gone. The team narrowed it down to a cluster of openings near the construction work and began a careful, time-tested process of coaxing it out: pouring water into the suspected holes to make the snake come out of hiding. It worked. The tip of the snake’s snout broke the surface first, and moments later, the rescue team had it secured. The dramatic mid-air drop had delivered a rat snake, India’s familiar, non-venomous, rodent-controlling resident, into a homeowner’s garden, and from there into the safe hands of a rescue team.
The kite, as is its nature, likely moved on to find another meal, but the rat snake, very much alive and unharmed by its unconventional flight, was released back into a suitable natural habitat after a routine check.
Such rescues call for techniques shaped entirely by the terrain and the moment. When water doesn’t draw a snake out, the team turns to other tricks of the trade, including the smoke of burning red chillies, a method used carefully and only where appropriate by skilled rescuers, which encourages a snake to abandon a hiding spot without harming it. Every rescue site comes with its own puzzle, and Kashmir’s rescuers have learned to read the landscape, the construction debris, the crawl spaces, the creeper-covered walls, as fluently as the snakes that move through them have.
Temperature, too, dictates the rhythm of these calls, as a sudden cold spell sends snakes deeper into hiding, and rain quiets the helpline almost entirely. But the scorching heat brings its own pattern, as the snakes surface only in the cooler hours of early morning and evening, which make the team’s busiest windows shift with the mercury, not the clock.
Geography plays its part as well. Paddy fields and the forest fringes of Dachigam are reliable hotspots, as is the cantonment area nearby, where homes back directly onto unfenced hillside, leaving no real barrier between wilderness and the living. Even the city’s markets generate their share of calls, often involving snakes that have travelled in unknowingly with goods trucked in from other cities and regions, are some of the calls the team treats as high priority precisely because of how disoriented and far from home these animals are.
Every call begins with a question and callers are asked to describe what they’re seeing in plain language; descriptions can be remarkably precise without anyone involved knowing a single scientific name. One recent call from Avantipora described a snake having ‘a tiger print’, and the rescue team immediately recognised the pattern. This was undoubtedly a cliff racer, a non-venomous species common to the region and instantly identifiable once you know what to look for in a stripe. That knowledge sharing doesn’t end when the rescue does and after every call, the team takes a few minutes to explain to the household what species they encountered and how to handle a similar situation safely in the future, turning every rescue into a small lesson in coexistence.
Not every case ends as smoothly as the kite’s accidental delivery. In another memorable rescue, a Levantine viper, a dangerous, venomous species, was found tucked beneath the gas counter in a family’s kitchen, near the washbasin, while the entire household waited outside, having wisely evacuated the moment they spotted it.
During the month of May, the Wildlife SOS Rapid Response Unit in Jammu & Kashmir responded to 33 reptile rescue calls across the region. While no mammal or bird rescues were recorded during this period, the high volume of snake rescues reflected the seasonal surge in reptile activity as rising temperatures drove them into human-dominated spaces in search of shelter.
DELHI-NCR
As the capital baked under back-to-back heatwave warnings throughout May, the Delhi Rapid Response Unit found itself responding less to curious wildlife and more to exhausted, dehydrated animals struggling to survive the city’s unforgiving concrete heat trap that has developed over the years. Over the course of the month, the team carried out 253 rescues, including 41 mammals, 174 birds and 38 reptiles, reflecting the immense pressure that extreme summer conditions place on both urban wildlife and rescue teams alike.
Among the month’s notable avian rescues was a red-naped ibis rescued from Vasant Kunj, which had become stranded inside a resident’s home, unable to find its way out.
In Mundka, the team safely rescued 13 juvenile checkered keelback snakes found scattered across different sections of a warehouse, safely removing them from the premise and relocating them to a more suitable habitat away from human settlements.
Another call from Azadpur’s Adrak Mandi, a busy market lined with ginger warehouses and shops, led to the rescue of an Indian cobra that had sought shelter there. At the same location, the team also rescued a red sand boa that had been found in the possession of a sapera (snake charmer). Together these rescues highlight the different ways reptiles can find themselves in urban environments, from seeking cooler, sheltered spaces during extreme heat to being displaced or caught in human activity, but also how they can travel considerable distances, only to find themselves somewhere else.
The team also responded to a call from a gurudwara in Vikaspuri, where a rat snake had inadvertently entered the premises. The snake was rescued and released into a suitable habitat, ensuring that both the reptile and the people at the place of worship remained safe.
As temperatures continued to climb, the rescue helpline received a noticeable increase in reports of snakes and these sightings were the most common during the cooler hours of the morning and evening, when reptiles ventured out in search of water, shelter or prey before retreating as the heat intensified, a recurring seasonal trend witnessed across the National Capital Region every summer. As cities continue to expand and natural habitats shrink, encounters between people and wildlife are becoming increasingly common. May’s rescues underscored the importance of timely intervention, responsible coexistence and public awareness in ensuring that displaced animals are given a safe second chance while helping communities respond to wildlife emergencies with patience rather than panic.
AGRA, UTTAR PRADESH
In Agra, where summer temperatures peaked well beyond 45°C, May was defined by the desperate lack of water. As ponds dried up and shaded spaces became increasingly scarce all around, the Wildlife SOS Rapid Response Unit witnessed a noticeable rise in distress calls involving animals struggling to cope up with the extreme heat.
Throughout the month, the team responded to a total of 93 wildlife emergencies across the Agra region, rescuing 30 mammals, 29 birds, and 34 reptiles. The diversity of these rescues also reflected the far reaching impact of the season’s extreme temperatures, with animals from multiple species seeking refuge in urban spaces.
One particularly striking case unfolded, when the soaring temperatures drove reptiles into human-dominated spaces in search of cooler shelter. Three common sand boas were rescued from beneath a staircase inside a government storage facility in Tehra Saiya. The non-venomous species had taken refuge in the cool, undisturbed space to escape the relentless heat. Following health assessments at the Wildlife SOS Transit Facility, all three were successfully released back into the wild, natural habitat. The common sand boa is Near Threatened as per IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.
The month also brought several avian emergencies linked to the intense weather. Along with multiple dehydrated fledglings that required fluids and supportive care before release, the team responded to two significant waterbird rescues in nearby Mathura. An injured sarus crane was rescued from a farm after sustaining severe wing injuries, while a juvenile greater flamingo was found grounded inside an army cantonment area, suffering from extreme heat stress and dehydration. Both birds were then shifted to the Wildlife SOS Transit Facility for intensive treatment and close veterinary care to ensure complete recovery.
From reptiles seeking cooler shelter beneath buildings to birds battling dehydration and mammals affected by the relentless heat, the month’s rescues underscored the growing challenges wildlife faces during extreme summers and highlighted the critical role of rapid response interventions in ensuring their survival in the time of need.
VADODARA, GUJARAT
Throughout the month, the Rapid Response Unit in Vadodara responded to 76 rescue calls, rescuing 9 mammals, 38 birds, and 29 reptiles. The team responded to a steady trickle of snake sightings, as reptiles abandoned sun-baked open ground for the relative cool of compound walls, drainage pipes, and garden sheds, a now-familiar pre-monsoon pattern across the city.
The wide variety of cases reflected the mounting challenges wildlife faced as soaring temperatures and dwindling water sources pushed animals into closer proximity with people across the city.
Every month, Wildlife SOS receives hundreds of calls regarding distressed animals trapped in urban areas. Wildlife SOS operates 24×7 emergency rescue helplines in four regions:
Delhi-NCR – +91-9871963535
Agra & Mathura in Uttar Pradesh – +91-9917109666
Vadodara, Gujarat – +91-9825011117
Jammu & Kashmir – +91-7006692300, +91-9419778280
If you come across any wild animal in distress, alert our rescue teams on these numbers as soon as possible.
Feature image (Rescued sarus crane): Vineet Singh / Wildlife SOS
