Snakes alive...

OMG kids, this photo from The Telegraph last week of a 6' boa constrictor sighted in a local beauty spot in Yorkshire in the UK got me worrying quite a lot. As my family know, being a wife and mother has turned me into a serial worrier, so this is at least a bit of a distraction for me or a brief respite for them. Now, if I read the situation right, Inspectress Suzy Q noted that a 6' boa constrictor was reported missing in East Sussex at the beginning of the month. It's owner(!?) informed all and sundry that it would be on the hunt for food as it was hungry, in an area inhabited by the elderly and their pets. The mischievous sprite in me wonders which the half starved, recently liberated reptile would actually prefer?

Let me confess that I am terrified of snakes. Nothing Freudian about this chaps, it comes from a very real fear of growing up in mamba country. Green or black, take your pick. Lethal either way. As a tiny tot, Suzy Q  had a night adder pass over her foot (or at least close enough to touch, not being one prone to exaggeration) and thought she was a dead cert for Springbok Radio's Death Touched my Shoulder. Golly gosh, did I forget to mention that programme when I wrote about old radio shows recently? Please do forgive me, specially those who wrote in about their favourite old programmes. Thanks for taking the time to write and sharing those memories of Next Stop Makouvlei, Father Dear Father, Pick a Box, Check your Mate and Test the Team with me. Memories indeed.

Anyway, this old boa on the loose in England, far, far from it's  homeland in South America, got me wondering how and why it came to be there. And is it the same one which escaped or are there others slithering around that little rainswept island?  It seems that boas travel very slowly, so it may indeed be another reptile on the run.  (Or not. Sorry no pun intended.) St Patrick, where are you when we need you? I'm sure it will be a great relief to the pensioners, pet and smallholding owners when at least one is captured. It also seems that there is a roaring trade in these exotic, but dangerous creatures, though why anybody would want to keep one is beyond me.

So, I'll have to share an old story and a funny memory with you too. Way back in the 80's I was the only foreign student on a course in the South of England. Apart from being desperately cold, and both homesick and lovesick, I was ostracized by the other members on the postgrad course for being a South African. I was quite affronted and confused when they attacked me and accused me, a liberal, of being personally responsible for all the atrocities of the apartheid regime. So to add to my joy, I was desperately lonely and victimized as well. Just my luck though, the somewhat eccentric chief tutor took a liking to me. She traditionally invited all her students to her home for a celebration at the end of the course, there to meet her pet boa constrictor, Rosie. I'd spent the entire course wondering how I could inconspicuously avoid the occasion so as not to expose my herpetophobia and jeopardize my marks. For some strange reason, she decided to invite only me to her end of year bash. The rest of the beastly bunch got wind of this and taunted me mercilessly with stories about how weird she was and what she and Rosie were likely to do to me. Panic attack, as I was in truth, an illegal alien, who'd slipped under the radar as a student, and I couldn't risk failing and getting thrown out of the country. How else would I ever get to see the future Mr SQ again? True Confessions of a much younger Suzy Q for you!

What to do? I phoned her to say that somebody had put sugar in the tank of my old banger and it wouldn't start. She offered to come collect me. Yikes, I'd be there alone with no means of escape. My car was suddenly fine again, and I contemplated whether I should drink so much of her famed elderberry wine that I would be oblivious to Rosie slithering in her glass chamber as we ate, or to abstain entirely in case it was laced and I'd wake up naked with Rosie draped all over me!? This was Real Fear. I think I must have opted for the former, for I have not much recall of the evening, but I know I beat a hasty retreat, feigning a death in the family or something similar. You can imagine how popular I was at prize giving when I got top marks though. Ha ha ha.

Slithering snakes. Obviously some people love 'em, whilst others loathe 'em. Alice Cooper, that black eyed rock star of the seventies performed with a boa constrictor. That was when he wasn't biting the heads off chickens on stage. Still, he did make some good music. Closer to home, our very own lissom Glenda Kemp performed at stag parties and corporate functions with her python. The mind boggles, but the men, purportedly goggled. Today she seems to have found the Lord, apparently regretting exposing her youthful body and offering us exposure to her soul instead, through prayer.

www.glendakemp.wordpress.com

Hmmm, just wondering how many different lives are left in me, and you, and you? Food for thought...

From a slightly bemused Suzy Q, who will no doubt have nightmares tonight!!


Adieu xx