(The Global Profile)

BANGKOK — Once you see a snake in Bangkok, the snakiest capital in the world, you see snakes everywhere. Loops of electrical wire look like snakes. Gas pump hoses look like snakes. Vines, green and vibrant, look like snakes.

There are also, as Pinyo Pukpinyo knows, a lot of actual snakes. In Bangkok each year, about 30,000 snakes are caught by fire and rescue personnel. On an average half-day shift, Pinyo, the top snake catcher in Thailand’s capital, wrangles more than 20 snakes, the reptiles secreted in sewers, curled in flowerpots and toilets, enmeshed in recycling, and pressed against branches ready to snack on geckoes and tree shrews.

He catches cobras, pythons, kraits and pit vipers. Those are the scary snakes.…