Zambia World Wide

On one of our many trips to the bush, John Dorrington and I went to spend some time with a friend of his who was tracking a renegade elephant for a local chief. We "acquired" a very long python, at least 10 ft. long and decided to bring it into town as a pet.

We lived in an upstairs flat at the time and I have no idea why we thought of such a stupid idea. Anyway, we taped the snake's mouth up just to be on the safe side and shoved it in an old suitcase on the back seat of the car. We had to go to the airport as soon as we got back to Kitwe, to pick my dad up who was visiting from South Africa, so we decided to leave it on the back seat. My dad gets in the car and asks, "What's in the case?" To which we reply, "a 10 ft. python..."  "Oh," he says and carries on like nothing is amiss, draping his arm casually over the case as he is talking to us. He had a chronic fear of snakes and I think he would have had a heart attack if he had believed us. I think he thought we were pulling his leg!

When we got home, we decided to put the case on the balcony out of the way and retrieve the snake when my dad left a few days later. Well, wouldn't you know it, when we went to get it, there was a hole in the case and no snake. How the hole got there, we have no idea, or how the tape got off the snake, either. We have no idea where it went because it would have had to slither up the wall of the balcony to get over it, and then drop two stories to the ground!! I would have liked to have been a fly on the wall when it was finally found by someone else!!

John was very fond of snakes and I recall another funny incident where he returned from the bush with some motley looking specimen, about the same size as the one above, and he decided to take it to work to scare the employees in the workshop at Fairway Engineering, where we both worked at the time. He put it in a suitcase, like the ones the curio sellers used to come around with when they had carvings to sell, and he told the group that had gathered that he had old clothes to sell. They were all pushing and shoving each other to get close to the case and have first dibs at the contents when he opened the lid. You've never seen anything like it! There was a screaming stampede to get away. Cruel joke really, but very funny at the time. Living in Africa, I am sure he was not the first person to pull the "snake in a box" trick on an unsuspecting friend or younger sibling.