Indian woman marries cobra for 'love'

ATALA, India, June 2, 2006 (UPI ) --

An Indian woman says she loves her new husband and knows he returns her feelings -- even though he happens to be a snake.

More than 2,000 people turned out Wednesday to celebrate the wedding of Bimbala Das, 30, to a cobra that lived on an ant hill near her home in the village of Atala, the Times of India reported Friday.

Das said she fell in love with the snake and knew it felt the same about her, even though they could not transmit their feelings in the usual manner.

"Though snakes cannot speak nor understand, we communicate in a peculiar way," she explained to the newspaper. "Whenever I put milk near the ant hill where the cobra lives, it always comes out to drink."

The woman's new husband was not actually at the Hindu wedding, however. A brass replica of the cobra was used as a stand-in during the ritual and processional, the newspaper said.

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