A SNAKE STORY.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 2335, 29 September 1921, Page 1

A SNAKE STORY.

A PYTHON’S PERFORMANCES,

A snake story of an unusual sort was related by the Rev. 'Erwin H. JRichards, for 31 years missionary to Africa under the American Board of foreign Missions of the Methodist Episcopal Church, who made Iris report at the headquarters of .that organisation last month. A python fifteen feet long came out of the jungle one night, and raided the henhouse of the mission. The hen roosts were in an enclosure on the top of a bin made of horizontal logs to px’otect them from the smaller animals of the hush. The big snake wound his body in and out of the logs, and got his head among the fowls. He swallowed seven fryingsized chickens, a setting hen and her nine eggs. The noise made by the other fowls awoke two small native girls, students in the mission school, who slept in a dormitory near by. They armed themselves with an axe, and went out to investigate, finding the python still wound round among the logs, and drowsy after his meal, they chopped him in two. Their shouts brought half a dozen Methodist preachers in pyjamas and slippers, with lanterns and shotguns. The python was pronounced dead, and the natives who gathered from the kraal outside the mission compound begged permission to salvage the chickens. The fowl were found almost whole, and were home off in triumph by the natives. The eggs, too, were not broken, and were put under another setting hen, and hatched into normal mission chickens. Mr Richards gave the names of the Bishop of Africa and several other missionaries as corroborating witnesses.