Straits Times : Python found in 10th-floor toilet

JUL 05, 2002

Python found in 10th-floor toilet

A 2-M-LONG python slithered into the living room of Mr Tan Kok Chye's 10th-floor Housing Board flat, slipped away - and showed up two days later in the toilet bowl.


Vanishing for two days after it first appeared, the snake was caught by the police and will be sent to the zoo. -- LIANHE WANBAO

Yesterday, the elusive visitor was caught by the police, who were called in for the second time to Block 112, Depot Road.

The snake was first seen at 4 am on Tuesday when the taxi driver, 58, who was listening to music on the sofa, saw it curled up near his legs.

Said his wife, Madam B.H. Chua: 'He was getting up to go to sleep when he spotted a dark pile on the floor. Then he realised it was a snake.'

He woke his wife up and called the police. But the snake was nowhere to be found when they arrived 10 minutes later.

Madam Chua, 50, a housewife, said in Mandarin: 'We saw it going into the kitchen but the police couldn't find it. There were wet marks on the floor, and we thought that it must have escaped through the toilet.'

The frightened family barricaded the bowl of the squatting toilet with a wooden washing board, weighed it down with a pail of water and tried to use the toilet as little as possible.

Their daughter, Miss Tan Cheng Peng, 28, a network marketeer, said: 'It was very inconvenient. When we had no choice but to use the toilet, we would use it quickly and keep an eye out for the snake.'

There was no sign of the snake - until 8 am yesterday.

Said Madam Chua: 'I took the board away and I saw this black mass inside the hole. I thought, who threw this garbage bag in here? Then I realised that it was the snake.'

This time, the officers from Clementi Police Station managed to catch the python, which will be handed to the Singapore Zoological Gardens.

Zoo spokesman Robin Goh said that the zoo receives about 300 snakes every year, two-thirds of which are reticulated pythons, which are native to Singapore.

The West Coast-Ayer Rajah Town Council said it would look into the incident.