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JAKARTA, INDONESIA - One of the specialty restaurants in Jakarta is named "King Cobra." Its main menu attraction is, you guessed it, King Cobra. I had heard about this place (actually there's a chain of five of them in Jakarta) for months and was anxious to give it a try. This is partly due to a policy of mine in ordering from any restaurant menu: if I see something on the menu that would have tried to take a bite out of me if it had had the chance, I immediately order it to aid in my species' survival.

Anyway, my friend Raif, who is first secretary at the Turkish Embassy, was already acquainted with the restaurant and agreed to serve as my guide and consultant. The menu is fairly broad offering a variety of snakes as well as lizards, bats, monkeys and who knows what else. (This is where the good part starts.) Cobra blood has long been recognized as a general stimulant and health aid. There was a recent newspaper report that men in Thailand regularly drink it to prevent contracting AIDS. It is also claimed to be a powerful aphrodisiac. Whatever.

So we enter the restaurant, which consists of exactly four tables, each of which can seat four people. Except for the staff working there, the place was empty. (I later learned that we had actually come after closing time, 9 P.M., but we must have had that lean and hungry look that cannot be denied, so they let us in.) Upon Raif's request we were escorted back to the snake cages where there were at least three types of cobras: Black Cobra, White Cobras and King Cobras (you know, the ones with the hoods). We were told that a drink of Black Cobra costs the equivalent of US$5.00, White Cobra is US$7.50, and King Cobra is US$125.00. The last seemed a little steep for a single small drink, so I settled for a shot of White Cobra. That's when the action started.

Catching Cobras
Our waitress was Tri (sounds like "tree"), a 20-year old girl from one of the outer islands of Indonesia. She swings into action by opening the small glass door to the White Cobra cage and deftly maneuvering a long metal pole to finally get one of the snakes to balance on it so she could lift it out of the cage. Although she did this without any apparent fear and with what you would almost call grace, a very large and horrible looking scar on her right hand testified that the snakes were not always as cooperative as this one proved to be. As the snake was removed, Tri positioned its head over a knee high block of wood and as fast as you can say "snake eyes" she brought down a meat cleaver on its neck which swiftly severed the business end of the cobra from the rest of its body. She then held the snake's body lengthwise so that the tip of the tail was above her head and let the cobra's blood drip into a small cup already containing a healthy shot of arak, which is a kind of local home-made whiskey.

Down the Hatch!
We were then invited to sit at our table and the potion was brought to us. Along with it came a small sac which had been removed from the cobra. I think it was the bile sac or some such thing. In any event, that apparently is the real good stuff because our attendant then cut it open and drained the dark red contents into my drink. (In for a penny, in for a pound, I always say.) The cup was about the size of two shot glasses. As you may have guessed, there is only one way to drink cobra blood - down the hatch in one gulp. Umm-umm, good! Actually, the taste of the arak is so foul that the taste of the blood was completely overpowered, so I can't report much about that.

With my aperitif behind me, I could concentrate on the food items that were now brought to the table. We shared plates of deep-fried cobra and python satay (like a shishkabob with a spicy peanut sauce). These were pretty tasty.

The cobra blood cocktail definitely had a mildly stimulating effect, although I probably dampened it a bit with the several beers I drank both before and after. I personally don't think there's any connection, but that night I had a constant and irresistible urge to stick out my tongue about every 15 seconds, and I had a dreadful nightmare about being made into a pair of shoes.

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