Snake found in road tunnel

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33089, 2 December 1972, Page 1

Snake found in road tunnel

“Snakes alive!” exclaimed a cleaner in the Christchurch Lyttelton road tunnel at 5.15 a.m. yesterday. Lying on the tunnel roadway was a snake—a small one. The cleaners approached it gingerly — it was either hibernating, ill, or dead. They took the snake on a shovel to the toll plaza. The Lyttelton port agricultural officer was informed as soon as he arrived at work. “I thought it was a lizard when they showed it to me,” said the tunnel supervisor (Mr J. Storey). “It was about Sin long, and not a kick in it when I saw it. On close examination, it looked like a snake all right. “We have found some peculiar things in the tunnel since it was opened in 1964, but this is the first —and last, I hope—snake,” Mr Storey said. The snake was examined with curiosity by agricultural officers at Lyttelton. They thought it a species of grass snake. It was taken

away by a “head office” man from Wellington, and will be identified by scientists at Levin. “It is possible that the snake is from Ecuador — a ship discharged bananas from there at Lyttelton on Thursday,” said an agricultural officer. “The holds were gasfumigated before the ship left Ecuador. The dead snake possibly fell from a banana crate being trucked through the tunnel to Christchurch. “There will be no snake hunt,” he said. “It is the first snake I have heard of at Lyttelton.”