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The Standard 8 school leaver from Murang’a who became popular as a snake catcher prompting the Kenya Wildlife Services (KWS) employing him has passed on.
Mr Eston Kimani was buried on Friday on his parents’ farm in Kandundu village, leaving behind his pregnant widow, Ms Susan Njoki, whom he had married in 2020, and a daughter aged two years.
He was suddenly taken ill on August 29 and passed on three days later as he received treatment at Murang’a Level Five hospital, with doctors saying he succumbed to viral meningitis.
Born as the second born in a family of four, Mr Kimani came to the limelight when in 2019 he started trapping and capturing big pythons singlehandedly and with no safety gear.
Born in 1997 to Mr John Macharia and Mrs Christine Njeri, word around him started spreading fast that he was either a born magician or a vampire who never fully degenerated into evil due to his prowess in catching snakes.
Fame spread
At 23 years, his fame had spread all over Murang’a County and people would stalk him just to get a glimpse of him. His love for snakes had transformed himself into a domestic tourist attraction with many wanting to just see him.
By close of 2021, Mr Kimani had nabbed 11 pythons in Kiharu, Kiriaini and Maragua sub-counties and every time he was featured on local TV and radio stations, hence making him a celebrity.
The biggest recorded python that he subdued and caught alive was 35 kilogrammes and was 12 feet long.
He was called to the scene when two traffic police officers who had sighted it slithering across the road near the county commissioner’s office ran away, and from the comfort of the police station, called the KWS.
“The two officers accompanied the KWS officers to the place where they had seen the reptile and there it was, basking in the mid-morning sun. It was a new challenge and none of them had the knowhow to capture it,” said Aisha Mohammed, a resident who witnessed the incident.
She said that as the crowd grew bigger with the python in its raw confidence lying there unperturbed, it was suggested that Mr Kimani be called to help.
“He was called and 20 minutes later he arrived riding on a boda boda. He asked to be shown where the python was. He declared that it should consider itself captured,” Ms Mohammed said.
Stirred to action
But what struck those present as odd was that, while the python had all along ignored the crowds that had built around it and continued to bask in the sun, the moment Mr Kimani showed up, it stirred to action and slid into a thicket.
It was as if it had sensed that a bigger power than itself had showed up and it was now afraid.
Mr Kimani followed it into the thicket and 20 minutes later, he emerged from holding the serpent by its tail and head, its body straddled around his neck.
The closer he came to the crowds, the more it thinned with many running away.
The KWS officers were seen to resist the temptation of also running away, as the two traffic police officers walked back to their station instead of waiting for the KWS vehicle that had brought them to the scene to take them back.
How to capture a snake
Meanwhile, Mr Kimani gave a short lecture on how to capture a snake.
“You first grab it from the tail end. It immediately raises its head to attack. It is when it is rising to turn that you have to grab its head. Then wait for it to struggle to exhaustion. It takes between 15 to 30 minutes for it to run out of energy,” he said.
Mr Kimani became the talk of town and would be called to neighbouring counties to capture the pythons, for a pay.
It is the payments from his exploits that enabled him invest in the boda boda sector. By the time of his death, he had bought three motorcycles that earned him on average of Sh900 per day as net profit.
Media houses started interviewing him and he always joked that he was mistakenly born human, that he was supposed to be born a python.
He said that his love for snakes was profound and he would cry if he saw villagers killing them.
Watched documentaries
He said he so much loved the snakes that he started watching documentaries on how to capture them.
He would joke that in his adventures to capture them, he suspected that he incurred some snake bites but never got sick.
“That is what makes me suspect that my blood is the same as the one in pythons. The kind of bonding I have with pythons is so much that I even sweet-talk them to stop struggling as I capture them and they cooperate,” he said in his last TV interview.
His social life took a hit when some of his friends and relatives started associating his unique love for snakes with witchcraft.
“In our community, snakes are mostly linked to bad omen and are also associated with dark powers. Even when it was very obvious that I had failed to proceed to secondary school owing to lack of fees, many started spreading rumours that I was secretly practicing witchcraft in the bushes,” he had lamented.
Extraordinarily gifted
His father described him as “an extraordinarily gifted man whose fame was self-made, his enterprise self-driven”.
His mother eulogised him as “a hard-working man whose passion for the ecosystem was purely an inbuilt blessing”.
His wife said “he was not a python and neither was he a wizard, only that he was gifted in capturing “those scaring things”.
“But as a family man, he was caring, warm, loving and a progressively-minded man,” said his widow.
She said that her regret now is that her unborn baby would never see the father.
“He was such a loving man who took his marital responsibilities very seriously,” she said.
“It will be practically impossible to transfer my love for him to another man. All his love in me will now go to bringing up his children, so help me God,” she added.
Unique talent
Murang’a KWS Chief Warden Laurence Chege mourned Mr Kimani’s death.
“We have lost a unique talent that brought into our institution an inbuilt talent that served the society well,” he said.
Mr Chege added that said had been recruited as a KWS scout in Murang’a East in a programme where locals carry out sensitisation programmes on how to coexist with wildlife.
He said that KWS will partner with the society to ensure Mr Kimani’s young family does not sink into poverty. The Standard 8 school leaver from Murang’a who became popular as a snake catcher prompting the Kenya Wildlife Services (KWS) employing him has passed on.
Mr Eston Kimani was buried on Friday on his parents’ farm in Kandundu village, leaving behind his pregnant widow, Ms Susan Njoki, whom he had married in 2020, and a daughter aged two years.
He was suddenly taken ill on August 29 and passed on three days later as he received treatment at Murang’a Level Five hospital, with doctors saying he succumbed to viral meningitis.
Born as the second born in a family of four, Mr Kimani came to the limelight when in 2019 he started trapping and capturing big pythons singlehandedly and with no safety gear.
Born in 1997 to Mr John Macharia and Mrs Christine Njeri, word around him started spreading fast that he was either a born magician or a vampire who never fully degenerated into evil due to his prowess in catching snakes.
Fame spread
At 23 years, his fame had spread all over Murang’a County and people would stalk him just to get a glimpse of him. His love for snakes had transformed himself into a domestic tourist attraction with many wanting to just see him.
By close of 2021, Mr Kimani had nabbed 11 pythons in Kiharu, Kiriaini and Maragua sub-counties and every time he was featured on local TV and radio stations, hence making him a celebrity.
The biggest recorded python that he subdued and caught alive was 35 kilogrammes and was 12 feet long.
He was called to the scene when two traffic police officers who had sighted it slithering across the road near the county commissioner’s office ran away, and from the comfort of the police station, called the KWS.
“The two officers accompanied the KWS officers to the place where they had seen the reptile and there it was, basking in the mid-morning sun. It was a new challenge and none of them had the knowhow to capture it,” said Aisha Mohammed, a resident who witnessed the incident.
She said that as the crowd grew bigger with the python in its raw confidence lying there unperturbed, it was suggested that Mr Kimani be called to help.
“He was called and 20 minutes later he arrived riding on a boda boda. He asked to be shown where the python was. He declared that it should consider itself captured,” Ms Mohammed said.
Stirred to action
But what struck those present as odd was that, while the python had all along ignored the crowds that had built around it and continued to bask in the sun, the moment Mr Kimani showed up, it stirred to action and slid into a thicket.
It was as if it had sensed that a bigger power than itself had showed up and it was now afraid.
Mr Kimani followed it into the thicket and 20 minutes later, he emerged from holding the serpent by its tail and head, its body straddled around his neck.
The closer he came to the crowds, the more it thinned with many running away.
The KWS officers were seen to resist the temptation of also running away, as the two traffic police officers walked back to their station instead of waiting for the KWS vehicle that had brought them to the scene to take them back.
How to capture a snake
Meanwhile, Mr Kimani gave a short lecture on how to capture a snake.
“You first grab it from the tail end. It immediately raises its head to attack. It is when it is rising to turn that you have to grab its head. Then wait for it to struggle to exhaustion. It takes between 15 to 30 minutes for it to run out of energy,” he said.
Mr Kimani became the talk of town and would be called to neighbouring counties to capture the pythons, for a pay.
It is the payments from his exploits that enabled him invest in the boda boda sector. By the time of his death, he had bought three motorcycles that earned him on average of Sh900 per day as net profit.
Media houses started interviewing him and he always joked that he was mistakenly born human, that he was supposed to be born a python.
He said that his love for snakes was profound and he would cry if he saw villagers killing them.
Watched documentaries
He said he so much loved the snakes that he started watching documentaries on how to capture them.
He would joke that in his adventures to capture them, he suspected that he incurred some snake bites but never got sick.
“That is what makes me suspect that my blood is the same as the one in pythons. The kind of bonding I have with pythons is so much that I even sweet-talk them to stop struggling as I capture them and they cooperate,” he said in his last TV interview.
His social life took a hit when some of his friends and relatives started associating his unique love for snakes with witchcraft.
“In our community, snakes are mostly linked to bad omen and are also associated with dark powers. Even when it was very obvious that I had failed to proceed to secondary school owing to lack of fees, many started spreading rumours that I was secretly practicing witchcraft in the bushes,” he had lamented.
Extraordinarily gifted
His father described him as “an extraordinarily gifted man whose fame was self-made, his enterprise self-driven”.
His mother eulogised him as “a hard-working man whose passion for the ecosystem was purely an inbuilt blessing”.
His wife said “he was not a python and neither was he a wizard, only that he was gifted in capturing “those scaring things”.
“But as a family man, he was caring, warm, loving and a progressively-minded man,” said his widow.
She said that her regret now is that her unborn baby would never see the father.
“He was such a loving man who took his marital responsibilities very seriously,” she said.
“It will be practically impossible to transfer my love for him to another man. All his love in me will now go to bringing up his children, so help me God,” she added.
Unique talent
Murang’a KWS Chief Warden Laurence Chege mourned Mr Kimani’s death.
“We have lost a unique talent that brought into our institution an inbuilt talent that served the society well,” he said.
Mr Chege added that said had been recruited as a KWS scout in Murang’a East in a programme where locals carry out sensitisation programmes on how to coexist with wildlife.
He said that KWS will partner with the society to ensure Mr Kimani’s young family does not sink into poverty. BY DAILY NATION