When Vanita Jagdeo Borade was 10 years old, she would spend her holidays playing on her father’s farm in the Naigaon Deshmukh village in the Buldana district of Maharashtra. The fields were next to a forest and Vanita was friends with children of the tribals who worked on the farm and lived nearby. With these children, Vanita learned about wildlife including honey extraction from beehives and fishing. Often, their fishing net would trap water snakes along with the fish. But the children fearlessly separated the snakes from the catch and released them back into the water. “I learned that those water snakes were not venomous. I also became comfortable with wildlife in general as we kids caught chameleons and other non-venomous snakes during the monsoons and released them in the wild,” recalls Vanita, now 47.From play to rescue work What began in 1985 as a child’s pastime took a serious turn when Vanita caught a red sand boa (commonly known as do-muha saap) that had entered her house in t...