Johannesburg - Look before you go. Then close the toilet, switch off the lights and shut your bathroom door.
That’s the advice from a Pretoria snake catcher to frightened homeowners in a Pretoria East block of flats after a venomous snouted cobra escaped from his clutches this week.
On Thursday, snake handler Barry Greenshield was called to a flat in Menlyn to capture the large deadly snake that had slithered out of a toilet the previous night.
“It was a close battle. I’m not the tallest guy. I’m 1.57m and I had that snake out and it was my length."
“The homeowners told me they were going to do their business when they saw the snake.
They just closed the toilet lid and thought it would go away. “But when they woke up that morning, shucks, it was still inside the toilet.”
But after a minute-long “tug-of-war” with the reptile, it slinked back into the toilet. For Greenshield, it was his first escapee of the season. “You win some, you lose some,” he says.
“It was a close battle. I’m not the tallest guy. I’m 1.57m and I had that snake out and it was my length. They are known to exceed 2.5m.”
He spent five hours disconnecting plumbing pipes and rummaging around in toilets in the block of flats. But Greenshield believes the snake has probably escaped to the natural environs around Struben Dam behind the apartment complex. That’s probably where it came from.
“Looking at the way the pipe was run, the way it exited and the drop, it was very near to the manhole.
“I think it’s gone back to where it came from. Keep your toilet lid closed. To the snake, it will look like a burrow and it won’t push to get out,” he adds.
Saturday Star