I am a missionary kid that grew up in Ivory Coast, West Africa. I have been into the deep jungle a couple of times with my good Friend, Kouadio. He is Ivoirian and lives in a small village about 100 miles from Abidjan. He was hunting monkey one day (I was not with him at the time) and was trying to stealthfully sneak up on a group of them. He crouched down into a crawling position pushing his shotgun in front of him. He felt what he thought was a large branch fall on his arm. When he looked down to remove the branch he noticed the very large head of a Rock Python firmly attached to his arm. The snake had already started wraping itself around him when he grabbed the snake by the neck and ripped the snake off of his arm. He was then able to get his shotgun with the injured arm and blow its head off. He made his way back to his village losing lots of blood on the way. He had evidently severed the vein in the crook of his elbow while ripping the snake off. When he arrived at his village he was very weak and was rushed to the local clinic where they pumped him full of antivenom that almost killed him. His friends returned to the sight to retrieve the snake to eat. They were only able to return with half of it because they claim that it was 12 meters long. I knew that they had no real way of measuring it so I asked him where they got the tape measure. My friend explained that they measure 1 meter = the distance from the middle of your chest to the end of your hand. This is more or less correct depending on the individual. 12 meters is more than 36 ft! Does anyone out there know if this is even possible for this species? My friend also gave me the skin from the half that they brought back. It stunk and hadn't been tacked out but was fairly sun dried. I dried it some more when I got it and it shrunk about 3 or 4 feet. I then had it treated by a local African tanner. It is now 12'7" but I know that it shrunk alot before I got it. Does anyone know if it is possible to determine the original length from the skin that I have? What is the record length for a Rock? Which snake holds the world record and how long was it? I also heard from other Africans that it is not uncommon in remote areas for these snakes to kill and eat poeple. One person I talked to said that he had actually witnessed someone from his village being cut from the belly of one of these snakes. He was part of the search party sent to find the man after he had been missing.

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