Pity Chinese folks trying to celebrate while living in Ireland, Hawaii, Iceland or New Zealand, the only countries free of native snakes. Narcisse, Manitoba is famous for its dens of red-sided garter snakes which burst forth in spring with as many as 70,000 serpents, the most snakes you'll see at any one time anywhere in the world. One of the traits of the year of the snake is fertility. Some of his Cantonese countrymen opt to cook their snake and serve with bamboo shoots instead.
Snakes are symbolic of renewal due to their skin-shedding.
Snakes and Ladders , the board game, may date back as far as the 2nd century BCE, and was brought to England from India in the 1890s. The most venomous land snake is the Inland Taipan found in Australia, but its bite is second to Belcher's sea snake. According to Guinness World Records, you are most likely to die of snake bite in Sri Lanka, where an average of 800 people a year are killed by snakes. E-mail Joyce Smith .