Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 50, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 February 1912 — Snakes Stampeded Mail Clerks. [ARTICLE]

Snakes Stampeded Mail Clerks.

When one of the English mall bags was.: opened at the Port Elisabeth (Cape Colony) postoffice fire lire snakes, each about two feet six Inches long, darted put. Their appearance disorganized the work In the sorting department for upwards of an hour, after which they were finally captured and delivered to a director of the Port Elizabeth museum, they had been dispatched from West Bromwich, England. It appears that the snakes, which turned out to be of a harmless variety, were packed, hi a torpid condition in a moss-lined wooden box, perforated with a number of air holes. It is surmised that the heat of the tropics roused the reptiles from their torpor and that they wriggled out of the box into the mall bag, in which they existed for the re* malnder of the voyage.