Yesterday, I was going around Ulan-Ude, taking the pictures for a post about this beautiful city for the whole day. In the evening, I found myself relaxing with some beer in a place called Duff, which is, you've guessed it, a bar. After a while I get a call from a friend who was helping out at the animal shelter, which held a charity day. It was winding down, but they needed some help.

Pro tip: If friends are doing charity work and ask for your help, you have nothing to do, it is a good idea to go and help them!

They even have this whole wall huge image of Simpsons cast at Moe's, but the photo was all blurry.

Well, since all of that was the case, and I was nearby, I dropped by to help them out with some lifting, and moving of cages. About 20 minutes later everything was done. Before we took our leave, one of the girls that run the shelter asked if we know anything about snakes?

And yup, there was a glass jar on the table with a young snake in it. Since the ventilation holes were to tiny, we opened it, and I made some holes with the scissors.

An opened jar with this little guy, or rather gal, as we later found out.

They had no idea what to do with this snake. It is a ratsnake called Dione ratsnake, or in Russian it is called Uzorchatiy poloz, or patterned ratsnake. I think it features in quite a bit of the folk tales. Usually the snake kings daughter is a ratsnake, and the hapless protagonist buys and frees her, or something. You know, how the folk tales go.

She is a bit wary of this whole situation.

This young snake was brought to the shelter by some Emercom personnel, as it was injured, as we later found out. The girls at the shelter had no idea how to care or feed for it, and were happy to get it to someone who knew what they were doing, since they couldn't get the snake to eat for several days now. They confirmed the contact information, and let us go on our way, after some goodbyes.

Just before we close the jar for transportation, now with nicely holed cap.

Okay, I've been talking about friend of mine, her name is Larisa and she has a whole lot of animals at her home. Four dogs, three cats, and now a snake.

Larisa and her friendly snake.

We stopped at the pub, to get a glass of beer, as well as better research the conditions, feeding and caring of the ratsnake, as well as to determine what type it was (Dione). Apparently she'll have to get an aquarium from her storage locker, and convert it to terrarium.

Here is another photo of the snake.

And it is more or less like the first one. :-/

Oh, and another thing, Larisa always wanted a pet snake, and even has a ring that depicts an exact same type of snake.

Notice the similarity?

Anyhow, till another time, Steemians! Hopefully, it will be telling you about the city of Ulan-Ude, which is situated among the rolling hills, east of lake Baikal. Ta ta for now!