‘Most of the time its not the snake, but people who need to be rescued’: Wildlife rescuers Benhail Antao and Louise Remedios

Going their professions, it may seem like the worlds of Benhail Antao, an honorary wildlife warden with the Goa Forest Department’s wildlife rescue squad, and Louise Remedios, a wedding planner, are poles apart. But, as it often turns out, destiny had other plans. Driven their shared passion — a love of the wildlife, especially snakes — the duo met and hit it off instantly. Today, between them, they have rescued some of the wildest snake species in Goa, stories and behind-the-scenes of which they will be sharing on the Second Season of Snakes SOS: Goa’s Wildest which has premiered on National Geographic Channel.
In an exclusive email interaction with , the duo talk about their shared interests, their rescue missions, their diverse (individual) professions, the importance and need to educate the masses about wildlife, and also their journey together. Edited excerpts below.
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Tell us about yourself, and your life journeys.
Benhail: When I was very young, I used to see a lot of snakes being killed around me because people had no other choice and they were terrified. Even my family members were of the opinion that if you see a snake, you kill it, both out of fear and a lack of knowledge and awareness. But since I was very interested in wildlife, I eventually learned how to catch snakes and relocate them, around the age of 12 and 13. Soon, word spread throughout the village, and people began calling me whenever they spotted a snake. Then, after I joined the forest department, I used to turn over the snakes I had rescued, to them only to realise that they, too, had very few people who were into rescuing at that time and that there was an overload. So, I began volunteering and assing the department, and it’s been 20 years now. I was made an honorary wildlife warden. Simultaneously, I was studying mechanical engineering, and then I joined and started running a wedding planning company with Louise — something that helped meet our ends, and wildlife rescue remains a passion.

Louise: I’ve always loved everything about wildlife, and in general, I think the ability to communicate with animals using nonverbal cues helps build something like trust is special. Trust, of course, is built at different levels with different animals, because they all have different intelligence levels. Snakes, for example, are not particularly intelligent, except for a king cobra. But just to see and observe Ben, who is able to calm down the animal beautifully and effectively through his body language has been very fascinating for me. That for me, is the motivation when we’re dealing with wild animals.

How did you both meet and develop shared passions?
Benhail: I’ve been doing awareness programmes for the past 15 years. I go around and raise awareness about snakes and wildlife, and how we should coex with them, and I talk about empathy. I met Louise at one such programme at a five-star property where she was working at the time. I was called the hotel to train their staff on how to handle various snake issues, and Louise was very interested in snakes; so that’s how we met. And ever since, our interest has blossomed into various other things, and we got married later.
Louise: I got very interested in his knowledge because it was more experience-based knowledge, and he was debunking a lot of myths that we believed. We followed each other on social media, and then he summoned me for a rescue. Aside from being amazing and thrilling to be a part of his rescue, it was also exciting because that’s when the sparks flew and things began.
How did the transition from wedding planners to wildlife rescuers happen?
Louise: There’s no transition as such because we both have separate job roles. Ben looks after the production and his work starts a little later, after I confirm a wedding. Once we plan it, we give it to Ben to execute our ideas. As such, we also work at different times of the year and Ben is freer in the earlier part of the year when he goes on rescue missions. I accompany him whenever I get the time. But, I have had to slow down a little bit in terms of how much business I take now. So that’s where wedding planning ends and wildlife rescue begins. It’s a balance and the two are completely unrelated.

The two professions are poles apart; do you learn/implement the learnings from one to the other?
Benhail: Each individual is basically unique, and everyone must be treated very differently. It’s a little easier with humans because we communicate with words; with animals, it’s more straightforward, and it’s very easy if you know how to read body language. So, we’re both communicating with everyone, as if we’re rescuing 10 Cobras in a single day, and each Cobra is unique. Because every individual behaves differently, the only similarity I see here is between the fields, which are very different.

Tell us about the second series of the show, and in what ways will it be different?
Louise: Season2 of Snakes SOS (every Thursday 8PM) has more unique rescues. In season one, we were just running around with a camera, living and breathing what we do as we didn’t know what to expect and was expected of us. But now, we have become a little bit more aware and even relaxed. So, it also happened to have amazing diversity in terms of the rescues. I think even the difficulty level was phenomenal because there are some rescues that took us weeks. And it was fascinating as nothing that we thought of happened and then in the end what the outcome was… crazy. I think in Ben’s entire career of snake rescues, he’s never seen a rescue like that.

Benhail: One of the longest rescues in my life when it comes to snakes happened in the last season. It has never been as long as this one took and shooting in summer heat was not easy.
Benhail, you have been working with animals for about two decades now. What have been your biggest learnings?
My learnings have been two things, one is that when you have an animal in front of you, you need to show that animal respect. Now, respect can be of two types —  respect out of fear and respect out of admiration — but either is good, as it helps you keep your dance. I tell people to respect animals, and that if you can respect them out of admiration and realise how beautiful and unique they are and how they serve their purpose silently on this planet, is wonderful.
Next, is creating awareness. Since I have been rescuing for the last 20 years, I understand the impact of awareness — which can be a game changer. That’s how the masses start being aware and understand that every animal does not need to be rescued, and that the concept itself is very skewed. So, my main effort now after 20 years of being in this field is to share awareness. I also preach empathy so that we empathise with all living creatures. That’s the only way forward.

Also, since you understand the profession much better, were you not skeptical of Louise joining you?
Benhail: I was; Louise always complains that I teach everyone else how to handle venomous snakes and give them the experience and exposure. Though Louise does an amazing job with animals, way better than me, I do not want her to come anywhere close to a venomous or a potentially dangerous snake. Also, she had in the past, bagged a venomous snake more efficiently than me but there’s a fear that an accident may happen and she’s somebody I love so I don’t want to be in such a situation. As much as I train the forest department and the various organisations, how to rescue snakes and venomous snakes, but still, I want Louise to stay away from venomous snakes; it is just my insecurity.
Benhail Antao and Louise Remedios. (Photo: PR handout)
Louise, what made you join him, and after all these years, what has been your biggest takeaway?
Louise: My motive behind joining him is more because of the fascination of building trust with any animal. So, when I started to go out with Ben, the motivation was to see animal and human behaviour, and how a person can use nonverbal communication, to build trust and convey that humans are not a danger to them. And then you watch the animal calm down and also trust in return. What’s my takeaway is that we have this wrong impression that we need to domesticate animals, to take away all their wild, natural survival instincts, and make them dependent on us. This is not something that should be encouraged. Every animal is born free and meant to be free.
What goes into rescuing a snake?
Benhail: In my opinion, again, I feel sometimes snakes do not need to be rescued. If it’s stuck in a net, a well, or under somebody’s bed and people want to kill it, that’s when you need to rescue the snake. Most of the time it is not the snakes, but the people who need to be rescued. When we go on a rescue, we need to first handle, rescue, and change the mindset of people. We rush there, make sure that nobody kills a snake, and nobody gets bitten either. After that, we need to remove the snake and relocate it in a healthy habitat which won’t be inconvenient to people or the snake. That’s how a rescue works, and snake rescues are the most common wildlife rescues that happen.

Louise: The first very important thing is to calm the people down because out of fear the person can go and kill the snake. Of course, if the snake is menacing and inside the house, we send somebody to assess if it is venomous or not. Most of the time it’s a non-venomous snake, especially in areas where there’s a lot of greenery. Then we understand if a person is open to talking and then explain everything about the snake to them and also that it is more afraid of you than you are of it, and then how to behave when you see a snake, what to do and not to kill these animals, because they all have an importance. We try to release the snake at a location which us away from people and is a known territory for the reptile as it would not know how to survive in an unknown territory.

You may have aced the art of rescuing wildlife animals, but how challenging is it to create awareness among people who may find themselves in tricky situations involving wild animals?
Benhail: People are very scared and that’s one of my biggest fears and challenges, because I know that when people are scared, they tend to do the wrong thing — either kill the snake or get bitten a snake, and in some way try to move away from the snake or try to catch it. So, people are the main concern. Like if we go to rescue a leopard who has fallen in a well, there would be so many on-lookers who could could fall into the wel. So, controlling people and their mindset at the rescue scenario is very, very important. Keeping people away, making sure that people are calm is the main challenge, because once you see an animal in dress, it is one single animal and it’s not a mob that needs rescue.
The animal does not know you’re there to rescue it. It is really scared and traumatized and then you have people, which are scared and traumatized again, adding to the trouble, so I would say the main challenge for me is handling people and then of course handling a stressed animal.
Have you faced any unpredictable situations that could have been harmful to life?
Benhail: Yeah, this happens a lot of times. For example, I went to a place where a rescuer had caught a snake, and put it in a bag. He took time to do a perfect rescue, and there came a local [who asked] what is taking him so long. He took the bag, started swinging it around and tied a knot. The Russell viper snake, which was in the bag, bit an onlooker. This is why you need to keep people away from the rescue site at all times.
Louise: Each situation is so different. I think what’s important is to calm yourself at a time when you see people getting aggressive. That’s something that we try to do, we try to zone out from the crowd completely where people are shouting or screaming or saying something. I’ll try to zone out and just focus on what’s there in front of me. That’s what Ben does as well because that’s the only way to handle it. And it’s always good to have some people around with you to handle the crowd to avoid making the more dangerous than it should be.
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