I’m trying to take off to Alberta, and the stories just keep rolling in…now here’s one from Gorham, Maine, merely a few miles from where I am right now.

According to the Associated Press and local media, Mara Ranger will be a little paranoid doing laundry now. When she was removing clothes from the washing machine at her Maine farmhouse Wednesday, the clothes moved. She told WMTW-TV, “I jumped back” and saw a snake. She quickly shut the lid and called for help.

Maine Animal Damage Control operator Richard Burton reached into the machine and pulled and pulled — all 8 feet of a reticulated python.

Burton guesses the snake got into Ranger’s washing machine through water pipes. The snake’s future home will be York Animal Kingdom in York.

Ranger is going to start looking into every corner of her washing machine. She says, “I’m going to be looking in the tub first — before and after, maybe even during, the rinse cycle.”

The currently best-known Richard Burton (November 10, 1925 – August 5, 1984) was a Welsh multiple award-winning actor. His is perhaps most remembered for playing Mark Antony in the motion picture Cleopatra (1963), when Cleopatra, played by Elizabeth Taylor had to divide her affections between an asp and Burton. The hot couple of that era later married when their mutual divorces were finalized, and later divorced too.

But there is another historical Richard Burton, known to have dealt with giant snakes too, in traveler’s tales at least, if not in reality. This is Captain Sir Richard Burton (March 19, 1821 – October 20, 1890), who was an English explorer, translator, writer, soldier, orientalist, ethnologist, anthropologist, sexologist, linguist, poet, hypnotist, fencer and diplomat. He was known for his travels, treks, and explorations within Asia and Africa as well as his extraordinary knowledge of languages and cultures. After his death his wife burned many of her husband’s papers, including journals and a planned new book of his. She believed she was acting to protect her husband’s reputation, and imagined she was instructed to burn the manuscript of The Scented Garden by his spirit, but her actions have been widely condemned.

Now who could have ever imagined a snake in the laundry would bring me to here?

Off to Alberta I go.

I’ll be posting remotely, nevertheless.