He lived in an old neo-classical house in Kato Patissia. Of course he didn't pay rent but there were so many heirs to the building and they were on such bad terms with each other that they couldn't come to any agreement about what they should do with it. None of them had even thought of letting it out, with the result that the carpet snake, five or six families of rats and mice, a whole swarm of insects and spiders, a dense mass of ivy and a fig tree had remained there undisturbed for years and years on end. The carpet snake took great care to ensure that the rats didn't come out at night to frighten the passers-by. The measures he adopted, admittedly a little harsh, were necessary. As soon as one of the rats poked out its nose, he grabbed it, squeezed it until he had crushed the life out of it, and then swallowed it… The years passed. With all the vitamins and calcium that he obtained from eating the rats, the carpet snake had grown larger and larger. He was now more than two metres long. But one day the lawyers managed to find a compromise that was acceptable to all the heirs, despite the fact that some of them were in Australia and others in America. For a couple of months a sign was posted at the front of the building: "TO BE SOLD FOR REDEVELOPMENT". The carpet snake couldn't read. His mother had never told him that it was a skill he would need one day. As a result, that morning when he heard the horrible racket of the bulldozers, it was a surprise for him. "But what the d…… is going on?" he just had time to think before being obliged to slither out at top speed lest the masonry fall on him and squash him. With two bulldozer charges, half an hour with the jack-hammer and one or two sledge-hammer blows everything fell down and the roots of the fig tree were exposed to view. The neo-classical house had become a muddy puddle. "Get away," the fig-tree said to him as it died. "Slither for your life…" Mrs ABC was coming home with a shopping-pusher full of vegetables she had bought at the street market. Her screams were heard two blocks away. "A snake! A snake!" General panic ensued. The homeless carpet-snake went as fast as he could to escape his pursuers. But he didn't know which way to go, because he had never come out into the neighbourhood before, so he soon found himself trapped in a dead end street. Seeing that resistance was hopeless, he surrendered. He was lucky. The man who picked him up had no intention of killing him. He had heard of the Wildlife Hospital, so he packed the snake in a box and sent him to us… After keeping him a few days for examinations and feeding him, we concluded that he was in the soundest of health and that he should be allowed to go free. It was just that his house had been pulled down. It was not possible for us to find him another neo-classical house for a home. Who nowadays wants a snake in his house? And so it was that it was decided he should go to another area in Attica, close to Athens but uninhabited. I undertook to transport him there. I left Aigina with him and on the way I called in at my house in Athens. I put down the cardboard box and stretched myself out on the bed to take a short nap. In my sleep I heard the almost inaudible slithering. Instinctively I awoke and leapt to my feet, fully aware of what had happened. As accustomed as I am to snakes, I don't particularly like the idea of one twining itself around my body while I am sleeping. Sure enough, he had managed to escape from the cardboard box. I hadn't calculated for him being to some extent able to regulate his body-width so as to get through extremely narrow cracks. I caught a glimpse of him again when it was too late to do anything: his tail was just disappearing into a narrow space between the wall and the sliding door of the small room I used as a laundry. The sly devil, in other words, had holed up behind the door, deep inside the wall, where it was impossible to get at him without demolishing the wall. And if I hadn't seen him I would never have known where he was. The following days I spent waiting for the carpet snake to come out. But - although he took a peek every now and then when he couldn't hear anything - the instant he picked up the slightest movement of a foot on the floor (snakes can hear vibrations in the ground) he pulled his head back immediately. I was desperate. I knew only too well how stubborn he was. I was beginning to think I would have to call for the bulldozers to demolish this house too to flush the carpet snake out of his hide-out. I decided then to leave some food and to go out of the house for the whole day, so that perhaps when I came back I would find him in a place where he couldn't get away from me. So that's what I did, after sealing off all the likely snake-holes, and I came back to the house the next day. There was no sign of the carpet snake. I looked everywhere: in cupboards, underneath blankets, behind furniture, you name it. He was nowhere to be found. I tried to move the sliding door to see if he had gone back to his old hiding-place. If he had been there, he would have put up resistance with his body and this would have prevented the door from closing completely. But I couldn't detect any resistance… The door opened and closed freely, so what was most likely was that he had found another hide-out. But now an even worse possibility occurred to me: could he have managed to get out of the house and escape onto the street again? Perhaps he had, in which case I would soon be hearing screams of terror and fear from my neighbours… A sudden thought came to me in my panic. "The washing machine! I haven't looked there!" What a peculiar biotope for a carpet snake: the wheels and cogs of the motor of an "ELCO 700 Li INOX"! Sure enough, there he was, coiled up and very firmly attached to one of the little wheels. I immediately overturned the washing machine. I grabbed him by the tail. He responded by clinging more tightly than ever. I pulled. He pulled. I didn't want to pull half his body off so I had to ease up. As soon as he felt my grip slackening he wriggled even further into the innards of the machine. I couldn't see him any more. It had become obvious that I would have to dismantle the washing machine. I dashed to get the tools from my motor-bike and started trying to undo the bolts. Damn! The tools were the wrong size. What could I do? Call a plumber? A washing-machine mechanic? What could I ask them to do? To get my snake out of the washing-machine? What? They would either have told me where to go or thought I was off my head… I nipped over to the workshop on the other side of the street without of course explaining to the people why I was asking them so urgently to lend me the suitable spanners. When I got back I went to work on the washing machine like a man possessed. Seeing his place of refuge once again falling to pieces around him, the carpet snake finally gave up without a fight… I bundled him into a cardboard box and set out immediately for the country in a car borrowed from a lady friend. As he slithered out of the box I could swear he was glaring at me. But he soon disappeared into the bushes and forgot that I even exist. Since that time I have never managed to get my washing machine in working order, or even in one piece. And the tools have been returned to their owners now and there is no way I can possibly explain to the plumber how the machine came to be in this condition.