This was the terrifying moment a rescuer was forced to put his hand inside a birdcage to pull out birds as a deadly cobra was lurking inside.<br /><br />Satyaranjan Mohapatra of Banki in eastern India was alerted by his pet birds, which were fluttering wings desperately and chirping loudly. <br /><br />When he checked the cage he saw that a cobra had sneaked in through a gap and killed three of his budgerigar birds. <br /><br />A two-member team from Snake Helpline, Lalit Mohan Panda and Durga Madhab Mohapatra, were called to the house.<br /><br />They found that the cobra had taken refuge inside an earthen pot where the birds had laid a few eggs. <br /><br />They prodded the cobra gently with a snake hook to come out of the cage, but every time the cobra poked its head out, the birds would peck it immediately, forcing it to retreat.<br /><br />Lalit said: "The birds were attacking the cobra seemingly to protect their eggs. As the mothers put up a ferocious fight, the cobra was clearly on the defensive. There were four eggs in one pot and three in another."<br /><br />As the cobra was also trying to attack the birds, Durga, one of the rescuers, put his right hand inside the cage and slowly removed the three birds one by one. <br /><br />Meanwhile Lalit, the second rescuer, restrained the cobra with his snake hook and kept it inside the pot.<br /><br />As soon as the birds were removed, the cobra came out of the pot on its own and was captured easily. <br /><br />It was released in a natural habitat away from the village.<br /><br />Subhendu Mallik, General Secretary of Snake Helpline, said: "The surviving birds had been attacking the cobra so ferociously it didn’t dare to leave the pot. It was so stressed, it had even regurgitated the birds it had swallowed.”<br /><br />The footage was filmed on July 23.
