It’s not easy to figure out exactly what happened to this snake but here are some things I noticed:

Mouth full of blood, internal bleeding and ruptured organs towards head (heart and lungs). Scuffed ventral (underside) scales in an area about 20cm wide.

Then there is the string tied tightly around the body. Maybe the snake was hit by a car then half alive was noosed out of curiosity or, the noose had a direct impact on its death or, the noose was put on after the snake was already dead. Either way it looks like there was some foul play involved.

I opened this snake up to see what it had been eating and found two fresh Cape golden moles in its gut. This big boy almost hit a total length of 2 metres (virtually max size in the Cape) and has probably been helping Tamboerskloof garderners for well over a decade.

In the final picture (apologies for poor quality and random baby bottle) you can see the area of damage in the upper half of its body behind the noose. In the end it doesn’t really matter how it happened – it’s a terrible way to go.