His best human friend dies, and he decides to visit his modest home and sleep all night in his bed to honour him.
It happens in Kenya, in the Baringo region, and everything would be normal if the protagonists were not a man and a python of almost three metres.
Ewoi Nakorot, a well-known herpetologist who handled snakes all his life and drew venom from them to produce antidotes, passed away in his home village of Kampi Ya Samaki last Thursday. The next evening, as the family of the elderly farmer recounts, a giant python arrived in front of his hut and slid into his bed which remained empty after the burial.
It was about 11 o'clock in the evening," says the widow, Esther. "The snake visited us and made its way to his bed. We did not chase it away nor did we try to kill it, because we are sure that it decided to visit and mourn its deceased friend. We saw him pass by the place where he was buried, before going to his bed, rolling up and sleeping peacefully'.
Indeed, Ewoi, called 'the snake doctor', had a very good relationship with pythons. Not only did he know how to catch them, he played with them and fed them. One photo shows him affectionately biting the head off one of these fearsome and deadly specimens.
"We consider this event a blessing," his wife explained, "it is possible that my late husband manifested himself to us through the snake he was taking care of," she told local newspaper The Star.
It was one of the sons of the elderly snake breeder and venom dealer, also an expert and initiated into the business by his father, who lifted the python from the bed and with his bare hands, without him protesting, took it back to the nearby grove.
Some in the village spoke of witchcraft, not least because his wife Esther is known to be a traditional healer who also uses local herbs to treat snakebite victims.
"Nothing of the sort,' said Nakorot's son, 'snakes have always been our main source of livelihood. Our father taught us how to tame them, feed them and take venom from them to trade."
Ewoi Nakorot, also known to Kenya Wildlife Service rangers and European scholars as 'Dr William', arrived in Baringo from Lake Turkana more than 60 years ago and also worked for renowned palaeontologist and KWS founder Richard Leakey, reporting on the different reptile species and drawing venom, as well as ridding homes across the region of dangerous specimens.
However, in his lifetime, he was also convicted and jailed for illegally purchasing specimens and opening a reptile house without a licence.
The Kenya Wildlife Service, while remembering Nakorot, expressed its dismay that the family let such a potentially dangerous and deadly python sleep in their home. People should not celebrate this event and rejoice in it," said Baringo Senior Warden Peter Lekeren, "because it is a potentially deadly incident.