I had grown rather complacent about walking around at night. It had been many months since we found the puffadder outside the kitchen tent, and this night I was tired, lugging my heavy computer case up the rock steps to our sleeping tent. Nose to the ground, thoughts a million miles away, it was at the very last second that my torch light fell across the python on the steps.

I was momentarily startled because we are far from the big rivers, but she was such a stunning animal and so beautiful, it took my breath away. I shouted for Philip to come see her before she disappeared in the dense, tall, dry grass but he couldn’t hear me over the negative banging of television news. She was not in the least frightened of me, nor interested in hurrying on her way so I shouted louder and louder until I finally raised a disinterested “WHAT?” from above.

Finally irritated by my rudeness, she mosied away, leaving Philip to glimpse just 2 feet of thick tip curving through the brush. It was enough to generate his curiosity, and so began a wrestling match requiring another three men. Dressed in only a kikoy, a light cotton cloth, around his waist and a torch in his hand, Philip followed her into the thorns, and after about 5 minutes, came out with a tight grip just behind her head. The other three grabbed her back end so she couldn’t constrict, but she was oily and slippery, valiantly fighting to escape a reception that was getting ruder by the minute from her point of view.

I had ditched my computer to grab my camera, and as we were stumbling up the steep rocky hill, struggling with the enormous lady, Philip’s kikoy began to make an untimely escape of its own! When he shouted for me to help, I grabbed his torch and put the handle in my mouth so my hands were free to continue photographing. That was the first, but not the last time, I tasted the putrid, oily, rank taste of python.

At the time, I was too busy laughing, stumbling, struggling to photograph and help hold the middle of what was obviously an enormous, writhing, angry snake weighing well over 100 pounds, to do more than wince at what I had just shoved into my mouth.

We got her to the top of the hill and measured her - around 14 or 15 feet - against the length of the tarpaulin of our verandah. Two large feed sacks were brought, and she was stuffed inside after all the photos were taken. The bag was double tied, and for her own safety, she slept inside our pick-up cab for the night. In the morning, she would be released down by the large river.

She was easily large enough to have taken our tall 9-year-old grandson had he been around, but we rather think she was on her way up to our tent after Gizzy, our 19-year-old cat.

Once she was safely tucked in for the night, and everyone calmed down from the excitement, the pungent, acrid, oily, dead fish smell of python overwhelmed our freed senses, and all ran for bucket showers. It was then that the taste of something so foul that there was nothing in my taste library with which to identify it, returned. Overloaded sensors registered a searing sensation in my mouth and throat as if someone had fried greasy, week old cod fish in my mouth, giving my upper stomach a sickening twist. Not even my full arsenal of Mint Listerine, toothpaste and bar soap made a dent in the foul taste which I eventually washed away with pots of tea and milk by the next afternoon.

The showers weren’t any more successful at removing her thick aroma; the tent stank of python for several days as did the truck.

The very next night, sitting on the same step I met the python, I found Gizzy waiting impatiently for her dinner to arrive. A few minutes either way, and we would have met the python later that night in our bed rather than on the steps up to the tent. It had been Gizzy’s lucky night!