EGYPT: Ambassador’s Snakes

Although Britain’s tallest ambassador, six-foot-four-inch Sir Miles Wedderburn Lampson. has spent the past four years of his diplomatic life in Egypt, until last week he put little stock in the accepted Egyptian method of removing snakes from a household. Proper procedure for this everyday occurrence is to call a professional snake charmer.

When 58-year-old Sir Miles and his second wife, beauteous, Italian-blooded, 25-year-old Lady Lampson recently found their summer villa infested with hooded cobras the ambassador determined to remove them his own way. But the native servants refused to go near the reptiles and Sir Miles’s British tactics failed to chase the snakes off. Last week he admitted defeat, sent out a call for the neighborhood snake charmer.

Muttering incantations which charmers profess the snakes know and heed, the aged snake man moved about the villa and grounds. “Come forth, O snakes, in the name of Allah! In the name of Allah, O snakes, come out of your holes,” he chanted in archaic Arabic. Suddenly he sank to his knees, began to blow a slow, wailing melody on his reed pipe, swaying his body as he played. Out from hiding slid the hooded head of a young cobra, then another and another, until nine young reptiles appeared, raised their bodies from the ground and riveted their eyes on the charmer.

The snakes began to weave back & forth as if they were “dancing” to the music. (Many herpetologists believe that cobras actually pay little attention to the pipes but sway in an effort to follow the body movements of the charmer. Carefully keeping them swaying with a motion of his hand. Sir Miles’s charmer stopped playing, inched forward, and with his other hand firmly grasped one reptile behind the neck, lifted it into a bag. He then repeated the performance on the remaining eight.

As the convinced ambassador made ready to pay for this service, his servants warned that a huge, full-grown cobra was still in hiding. The charmer resumed his playing and swaying. Soon a much bigger snake than any of the captured nine twisted into the open, slithered across the ground and crawled into the bag with the others.