Wrestler takes on 3m snake

2008-06-18 09:18

Magdel Fourie

Richards Bay - A South African wrestling instructor found himself in rather a different kind of wrestling match when he recently took on a massive forest cobra with his bare hands.

Jan Combrink, who is known for having caught many snakes in the past, said on Monday that he first had to get the "unusually aggressive" snake, which was nearly three metres long, out of someone's birdcage.

After that the real wrestling began when the sly beast escaped from the bag in which it had been put in Combrink's bakkie, and first slithered behind the dashboard and then into the body of the car.

Last Thursday, Combrink and his son Klein-Jan were on their way to a school rugby match in Empangeni, when he received a call to get a snake out of the garden of the school principal of Arboretum Primary School.

Snake kept escaping

The wrestler often caught snakes at a price.

Combrink said he raced to Kobus Buitendag's house in Richards Bay and caught the massive snake that was in the cage in which Buitendag bred parrots and other birds.

He put the slippery reptile in one of Buitendag's feed bags and drove with it on the back of his bakkie to Empangeni.

When he got to the sports fields, he put the bag on the driver's seat in the bakkie.

"There were lots of jokes at the game and I was teased that I was lying about the snake's size - because how could I have caught it?"

"So I took the guys back to the bakkie to show them," he said laughing.

To Combrink's great surprise the snake had escaped from the bag and slithered behind the bakkie's dashboard.

He drove home carefully and the next day he even broke open the dashboard to try to get the snake out, he said.

It was then that he discovered that the "very dangerous snake" had slithered into one of the car's body panels.

Combrink took another vehicle and had to rush to a wrestling match in Ermelo, putting the snake-catching mission on hold for a while.

When he got back on Sunday the snake was behind the dashboard again and he fought with his bare hands for nearly an hour to get it out.

The battle was tough as the snake had anchored itself by its tail.

"When I finally got it out, the first thing I did was to phone all the jokers to come and see that I hadn't lied," he laughed. The snake was later set free in the veld.

- Beeld