- The snake catcher said it was one of the largest specimens he had seen at work.
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A brave 5ft 2in pensioner tiptoed into her kitchen in total darkness armed with a baking tray to confront a burglar – but instead found herself confronted by a 16ft giant python she feared was going to Yorkshire Terriers.
Sharon Norton, 62, couldn’t turn on the lights because South Africa suffers regular power outages and waited until she opened the door to light her trusty torch.
The retired real estate agent was hoping to surprise a thief and beat him senseless with her heavy steel roasting pan, but she got the surprise of her life when he lit up the room.
The divorcee from Port Edward, in KwaZulu-Natal province, 100 miles south of Durban, said: ‘This huge snake stood up in front of me, let out a huge hiss and came towards me!
‘My heart jumped into my throat when I saw his jaws in the torchlight and I just hit him hard on the head several times and he walked away from me still hissing angrily.
A 16ft giant python was found lurking in Sharon Norton’s home in South Africa after she tried to hit it with a baking tray.
Sharon Norton said she would rather have faced a thief than the monstrous snake
The snake catcher said that, at 16 feet tall, this southern African python was one of the largest specimens he had ever been called.
‘These things can eat impala and bush buck and I’m only 5ft 2, so if it had caught me in its jaws, I don’t think I would have been able to do anything to stop it swallowing me whole!
‘Their head was moving very fast and you don’t realize how fast they are. Give me a thief any day!
“Once I realized it was a python I knew it had come after my Yorkshire Terriers as I breed them and have 11 – I used to have 15 but three other pythons have eaten four of them.
“This giant was obviously coming to dinner at number 5 and was as surprised to see me as I was,” said Sharon, whose grandfather was from Inverness in Ayrshire, Scotland.
She continued: ‘The python was huge and its body was thicker than my thighs and it backed up between the fridge and the wall with its jaws open looking to hit anything.
‘A local snake catcher has been to my farm three times before and I called him and he told me to stay put and keep an eye on him and he would be there with me in an hour.
“So there I was sitting in the kitchen with my baking sheet looking at the big old snake that was staring at me until the snake removal guy showed up with a friend to catch it,” Sharon said.
The snake catcher said that, at 16ft, this southern African python was one of the largest specimens he had ever been called and could have easily killed the brave pensioner.
Sarel van der Merwe, 58, said: “I had been there three times before, as the farm is something of a magnet for pythons, with these little Yorkshire Terriers running around like tasty targets.”
‘It was after midnight when I got there with my neighbor AJ Pretorius, who offered to help, and when Sharon told me how big it was I knew it was going to be a two-man job.
It took two men to deal with the huge beast that snuck into Sharon’s house after she left the door open overnight.
“The python was huge and its body was thicker than my thighs and it backed up between the refrigerator and the wall with its jaws open looking to hit anything,” Sharon said.
“This big guy put up a hell of a fight, but we managed to get him out of hiding and then we did a great job getting him into a snake container to get him out,” he said.
Sharon added: “I’m on a farm raising Yorkies and the pythons seem to know this.” One of my dogs was barking that night and I thought he was warning me that someone was downstairs.
‘From the noise I thought it might be someone sneaking in instead of wild animals, but when I lit the torch I saw a python coming towards me across the kitchen.
‘It was huge compared to the python in January that had taken one of my Yorkies and the other in November when I had two dogs and a few months before lost another.
‘I have stopped leaving the door open at night, as I used to do so the dogs could use the garden because of the pythons, but that night I forgot to close and lock it.
“I think I would have preferred someone to come in than a snake that size,” he said.
Professional snake catcher Sarel, from nearby Shelly Beach, weighed the southern African python, which weighed 56 pounds and measured 4.9 m long, or less than 16 feet.
The largest African snake and one of the largest in the world, it grows up to 19 feet long and up to 65 pounds in weight, but it rarely attacks humans and hunts its prey typically at night.
They are not poisonous, but can bite savagely with large curved teeth and constrict their prey to death with great force and eat dogs, chickens, crocodiles, monkeys, goats and wild deer.
The snake was safely released into the nearby Mpenjati Nature Reserve, which is 150 acres of wetlands with a predator-free river and estuary and home to monkeys and deer.