A group of passengers were lying around the swimming pool of their cruise ship and occasionally each of them would leap into the pool, swim around and then back on to their lounger.
All except one man, who just lay on his lounger in tee shirt and shorts, watching the others.
After a while one of them asked "Why don't you join in, the water's really refreshing".
"Sorry" said the man "I never take my shirt off in public due to the ugly scars all over my body".
"Ah, c'mon - no-one here's going to hold that against you. How bad can they be?"
The man undid a few buttons and held his shirt open. Sure enough, deep, ugly scars crossed his chest and stomach
"Wow, Er, sorry. How did you come to get those?".
"It was during my time as a soldier out in Malaysia" replied the man. "On the troop ship going out they warned us of three things that we must avoid. Bad beer, bad women and the black and yellow striped mamba".
"What's that?" asked one of them.
"It's a snake, indigenous to Malaysia, about three feet long with alternate black and yellow hoops running down it's body. Its bite is fatal and it can move as fast as the fastest sprinter, so if you come across one and it sees you, you can't run away from it".
By now the whole group were hanging on his every word. "So what do you do? asked one of them.
"There's only one thing you can do. If you act quickly enough, you can dive on it, grasp it in both hands and run one hand down it's body, and throttle the thing. I lived in dread of them all through my two years out there. It was in my last week out there that I had my close encounter. I was on patrol duty on the edge of camp next to the jungle when suddenly I saw it lying there on the path in front of me. I stopped. Had it seen me? I began to slowly back away when it twitched. I quickly decided that I dare not chance it and went through the procedure to disarm it and that is how I got my scars".
There was a silence, then one of the group asked "But how could such a small snake give you such severe scars?".
"Have you ever tried to strangle a tiger's tail?
Topic: black and yellow striped mamba (Read 581 times)