See Landlord Lock A Tenant Out Of Their Home Using A Snake

See what it looks like when a landlord using a snake to lock a tenant out of a home. There isn't any key that's going to open this up

By Doug Norrie | Published

This article is more than 2 years old

snake murder weapon

Sometimes in a tenant and landlord situation there comes a time when the latter needs to take action against the former. It’s just the way of things and if there is rent due, it’s time to pay up. Miss a couple of months? Well, there could be some consequences. And that was the case recently in Kenya when a landlord locked a tenant out of the premises because of failure to pay. Except instead of throwing the Schlage lock on that bad boy and taking the key, this landlord chose a different path. They used a snake as the lock, wrapping the reptiles around the handle, daring anyone to test the doorway. 

The snake picture was posted to Mike Sonko’s Facebook. The former governor of the Kenyan capital city of Nairobi has a robust Facebook page that is pretty outside the realm of politics. There’s a lot of stuff in there and one of the posts was of a landlord who had to take action against a tenant who’d missed two months of rent. You can see the green snake wrapped around the door’s lock. Is this an effective way to deal with a residency situation? Of course not. It’s silly. But maybe this was trying to send more of a message than anything else. Check it out:

In this situation this landlord is banking on a lot of different things happening. For starters, there’s the hope that the snake won’t simply slither away. That feels like it would happen in the first 30 seconds or so. Even if the snake stays put, one is then hoping the tenant doesn’t just come, grab it by the tail, chuck it off to the side and enter the premises. And I suppose after all this, there’s the hope that the snake wouldn’t bite the hand of anyone looking to enter the doorway. That last part likely has a bit more to do with just how litigious a certain region is. I can’t speak for how many lawyers get involved when it comes to these matters in Kitui, Kenya

Mike Sonko is now posting snake pictures to Facebook as part of his day, following a tumultuous run as the governor of Nairobi. In 2019 he was arrested on corruption charges and spent a brief stint in jail. A year later in 2020, he was impeached from the office of governor and that was the end of the political line for the guy. Besides posting snake pics, it’s not exactly clear what he’s up to these days. 

And in terms of snakes showing up in rather unexpected places, that’s been rather commonplace recently. There was the rather unfortunate incident when a dude caught a cobra bite in a less-than-ideal spot. It ended up landing him in the hospital with plastic surgeons having to come in because a certain appendage started to experience some “rot”. And then there was the kid who found a terrifying snake in his backpack at school. These are the truly scary situations. A little green snake “locking out” a tenant barely even rates by comparison.