This is the bizarre moment an animal rescue officer finds an empty snail shell choking a cobra around its body. <br /><br />A few children playing at a village near Bhadrak in eastern India spotted a cobra in a bush. <br /><br />The adult snake was choking with an empty snail shell wrapped around its body and was wriggling to free itself from its vicious grip.<br /><br />The cobra had even injured itself while struggling and was bleeding. <br /><br />The villagers made a call to well-known snake rescuer Mirza Mohd Arif, who rushed to the spot with his assistant and cameraman S K Niyaz.<br /><br />Mirza caught the snake, gripped its neck firmly and broke the shell with a metal stick.<br /><br />“The snake had perhaps come across the empty shell and tried to pass through a large hole in its spiral. The empty shell had wrapped itself around cobra’s neck like a ring making it difficult to breathe,” said Mirza.<br /><br />“It was bizarre, I had never seen anything like that earlier, he added,” he added. <br /><br />Empty shells are found abandoned in the forest when terrestrials snails die or are eaten by predators. The shells are made of calcium and hard to break.<br /><br />The footage was captured on Monday (February 18).
