EXTRAORDINARY ESCAPE.

Globe, Volume III, Issue 211, 11 February 1875, Page 2

EXTRAORDINARY ESCAPE.

The Inglewood correspondent of the Bendigo Advertiser relates the following incident : “ The other day there occurred one of the most extraordinary escapes from a terrible death that I have ever heard of. In Mr R. Donovan’s paddock, on the Sandhurst road, there have lately been some men engaged in building a stockyard, and cn Saturday last one of them, Mr Admonds, of Market square, an old resident of this town, went to a hole within the paddock for the purpose of obtaining a bottle of water, and while in the act of so doing he felt something squeezing him tightly round the thigh. On looking down to see what it was, to his unutterable horror he beheld a huge carpet snake, about six feet long, and two or three inches in diameter, coiled right round his thigh three times, with its head on the ground, and its neck under his boot, and the reptile with what little of its neck it had free—about four inches—had turned its head round and was actually fiercely bitting at the toe of the boot. Mr Admonds, on seeing the position he was in, immediately raised his boot and shouted for assistance, when the snake uncoiled itself and made off, and notwithstanding every effort made to find him, was not seen again. It is supposed that owing to the present dry weather, and consequent scarcity of water, the snake had made to the waterhole from the bush, and that while unconsciously setting his foot down, the man must have trod on the reptile’s neck, and thus rendered it harmless ; had he trodden upon any other part of its body, nothing could have saved him from certain death, and even now he shudders to speak of it, so great has been the shock to his nervous system. ”