ENGLISH LANGUAGE LAB:

PLAY AUDIO
Hey Leath! Do you want to go ahead and talk about the story you we're going to say?
OK, um, yeah, this was about, I'd say a year and a half ago and it was in Harare,
the capital, where my mom lives. I was on holiday back home seeing my mom and anyway
it's a Sunday morning and I was in the shower, got up pretty late, it must have been about half
ten, and all of a sudden my mom burst into the shower and said," Leath, Leath, there's
a snake, there's a snake in the kitchen." And so I thought, "Ah, what kind of snake would this be"
cause we live in the capital, residential area, almost high-rise. Well, not high rise, but residential
area. And so I put a towel around my waist and walked bad-temperedly throught to the
kitchen. Um, attached to the kitchen we've got this little courtyard, where we set out to
have morning coffee and breakfast. It's tiled and leads onto a small garden. And so I walked
out onto the courtyard and there was a seven foot Egyptian cobra! Wow. I was really, really
blow away because I know a bit about snakes and I know that a bite from an Egyptian
cobra in a country where antidote isn't readily available is almost certainly fatal. And,
there we were, mom and I, with a seven foot Egyptian cobra slithering between the courtyard
and our kitchen. And, eventually, we trapped it in the courtyard and I went to fetch guys who
work for national parks. National parks are the guys who kind of look after animal problems
within the city, and, uh, brought them around, and we were hoping that they were going to
catch it because Zimbabwe isn't so rich at the moment and stuff like that. They don't have the
facilities to keep caught animals so unless it's endangered they just shoot it, so the guy shot
our seven foot cobra.
Oh, they shot it, uh!
Yeah, and we had to bury it out back.
Really, well, still I'm glad, you just didn't want to be bitten or anything.
No, no. No way.
What a story!