Indonesia Pop Star Dies After Being Bitten by a Cobra in Mid Performance

Do not mess with snakes. Ever. Cobras especially, which can kill an elephant with a single bite.

Irma Bule was an Indonesian pop star who, like Alice Cooper and others, used a live snake as part of her act. In the middle of the second song of a show in Karawang, West Java, the other night her stage partner–a King Cobra named Rianti–bit her on the thigh after she accidentally stepped on the snake. That must have hurt, especially since she apparently thought the snake had been de-fanged. Watch.

According to reports, though, she refused the venom antidote offered to her by the snake handler and carried on singing and dancing. But 45 minutes later, she began vomiting and collapsed. She was taken to hospital. She’s now dead.

(Via Tom and The Telegraph)