Approaching A Pesky Python While Driving Down Links Road Nyali

several actions that had
unintended consequences

Coastweek
November 13, 2009
By: Teti Kamugunda

Kachumbari told me a story that he also get second hand on the issue of actions that have unintended consequences, writes TETI KAMUGUNDA.

There are occasions when we do things expecting a particular outcome, which we get.

However, sometimes the out-come is followed by another that was not intended and which becomes the more significant result.

The latter is what is considered an unintended consequence.

I will share a few examples, just to warm us up, before coming to the one I was told.

There was this lady who was driving along one of the quieter roads in Nyali area.

It was a route that she regularly used to get to the location where their ladies chama used to meet.

It was as such a road she knew well and could almost drive along with her eyes closed.

On this particular occasion, as she came round a blind corner on the road, she saw this reasonably sized python slithering across the road.

She had no time to brake and her instinct was to avoid stepping on the snake.

What she did was to lift her feet off the floor pan of the car (which had an automatic gear shift), let go of the steering wheel, shut her eyes and then scream at the top of her voice.

The car was thus free to do its own thing and it went straight at the speed it had been travelling at and rammed into an electricity pole.

The pole snapped and this brought down the adjacent pole because there was a power transformer that was perched between the two.

The transformer fortunately missed the car but the one of the poles came down on the vehicle narrowly missing the seat in which the lady was still sitting.

The cables that were being dragged down began to send sparks flying everywhere and also let out loud retorts as the cables contacted.

Neighbourhood dogs went berserk at the sudden intrusion into their afternoon 'siesta'.

The monkeys that normally move from tree to tree in leisurely manner as they foraged for food put an immense sense of urgency into their normally sedate activity and cleared the area around the incident very rapidly.

Several security guards and other people who were passing by initially took off but quickly realised that the situation was not life threatening and they instead turned back and run towards the scene as they saw what had actually happened.

These people stopped short of the accident location as they assessed whether it was safe for them to approach the car and transformer.

They began to gingerly inch forward.

The lady involved in the accident got out of the car thoroughly shaken up.

She began to dust herself up and repair the make up before she would be in a state to face the rest of the world to help her assess what had happened and what options she had.

As she was doing this, the people who had come by began to approach so that they could help her do whatever was necessary.

She asked them whether any of them had seen what happened and instead of the answering they scattered in all directions ad then began screaming to the lady to get away from where she was standing next to the car.

She could not understand why the sudden change.

She followed the eyes and fingers of the people who had run away and she saw to her horror that the python that had caused the incident in the first place was slithering rapidly towards the cover that the damaged car was offering in an otherwise fairly clear area.

It had obviously had something happen to it as it was slightly discoloured.

One of the fellows who saw it was later to suggest that the reptile had probably been singed and then thoroughly enraged by contact with the electrical cables and was now out to mete revenge on whatever it could find in the vicinity.

It was this sense of urgency by the python that caused the other people to run away.

The lady also decide she would not wait to enquire of the python why it was in a hurry.

She turned tail and followed the rest in fleeing from the angry reptile.

It took calls to the power bods, the wildlife service and the cops to get some order back into the place.

The python was trapped and taken away to rehab and later release by the wildlife service and the power guys came along and quickly patched up the damaged power supply apparatus.

The boys in blue were the last to come several hours later and they took down the details of what they could based on the fact that most of the evidence that they could have used had been removed from the scene by the first two responders.

In this case there were several actions that had unintended consequences and we will leave you to work out the actions and the unintended outcomes.
 
As Kachumbari says, strange things do happen!

Article at:  http://www.coastweek.com/3246-21.htm