Carsten and Nico - Oh how I wish I could have known you guys when you were kids. I'll bet your parents were a nervous wreck when you were out of sight!! 
Just the fact that you both like snakes tells me a little of what you did. 
Mori - I was interested to hear your story of the South African government failing to give you a permit for a cat sanctuary. What the heck is their reasoning? Would it not make enough money for them to have their share? It could only help raise people's impression of South African wildlife policies which with their hunting and culling and wanting to sell ivory and other wildlife products as well as the Tuli elephant fiasco doesn't help any of the southern African countries. It doesn't make any sense at all that you could breed cats to kill but can't rescue injured or orphaned ones. Could individuals living in their own home build a barn and keep rescued animals on their own property without government intervention? Just be as corrupt as the government and if they give you any grief threaten to put it on the internet, send an article to Time, Life, Newsweek, Animal Plant and National Geographic. They'll probably be so embarrassed that they will relent.
Enjoyed hearing your story of the 75 year old woman and the python. Where on earth did she get the strength to uncoil and throw a snake large enough to kill her?
Carsten - I loved the story of your Mom rescuing the askari from the snake. How did she "sort the situation out" - with a rock or stick? Would love to have seen that whole episode! 
Pippa - I don't know if these Craigs are related but would guess they probably are not, but their organization interests me and I'll have to try to learn more about it.
Now with all these extra snake stories I am really getting freaked out folks. You know I am terrified of them and that I have already had six deadly snake episodes around me in Tsavo - and I am returning there in two weeks!!! I didn't see any in August, but now after all the rains I expect I will again see them (hope that is all, see them from a distance, because I read an article in the Nation not too long ago about there not being much or enough antivenin in East Africa!!! 
I agree with you all that they are pretty when observed from afar, but I don't want another cobra in my bathroom thank you.
Nor do I want a green mamba slithering up the three foot high veranda and sitting about two feet from my bare feet or a black mamba at the side of my tent in the shade of the makuti!!! Luckily I am learning to "read" the sounds of the birds and when they start sqwacking I know something is around.
It was just a year ago that while driving over a small bridge over a dry river bed we spotted a HUGE black mamba lying in the river bed. As the car crossed over the bridge the mamba RACED up a 15 - 20 foot high sandy river bank. The mamba was about 15 feet long! To this day every time we cross that little bridge I roll my windows up!
Any way, I guess you have to be raised in Africa to truly appreciate snakes (except for the psychos here who keep them in the bedroom next to their little kids). I hope with time that I'll develop some of your feeling for them.
