MOSCOW SNAKE SCARE

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 55, Issue 295, 26 September 1935, Page 12

MOSCOW SNAKE SCARE

HUNDREDS ESCAPE FROM ZOO. Recently I was. surprised to see in Arbat Street a score of persons leap from a moving trolley bus shouting “snakes,” writes the Moscow correspondent of the “Daily Telegraph,” London. A man passenger, I learned, had put his hand into his mackintosh pocket lo get his fare and had pulled out a small snake.

He told me that snakes and lizards had of late become the curse of his tenement house, which was 100 yards higher up the street. The trouble had begun with a family party, the Members of which averred that they had consumed ice-cream only, seeing snakes under the dining table. The police accused all concerned of acute alcoholism. But then lizards began to peep at other tenants from the dusty tops of wardrobes and snakes slid away from under pillows and quilts. Soon hundreds of tenants of the great building heard serpents hiss and lizards scurry.

Inquiry at the “State Zoo Shop” on the ground' floor of the same block revealed that 200 fine snakes and 200 big, bright tropical lizards had escaped in the night 10 days previously. When an indignant committee of tenants went to the manager, Comrade Goriaeheff, to protest, he calmly answered: “You will all feel better when the winter comes. Snakes hibernate, you know. So do some lizards.”