The petrifying account of when a cobra coiled around McDan’s body as a baby

When the Chief Executive Officer of the McDan Group, Dr. Daniel McKorley, was a baby, his life was nearly snuffed away by a cobra, or so it seemed.

Narrating how this was, the Ghanaian business magnate said that his mother was the one who told him the story of how she had taken him along with her to the farm one day.

He explained, in his book, ‘The Path of an Eagle: Despair, Hope & Glory,’ it was a scary moment for his mother because she was helpless and did not know what to do at that moment.

McDan explained that he was a baby, and so when his mother was working on the farm, she placed him under a tree not too far from her until she started hearing a slithering sound.

Following the sound carefully, he said she eventually found that the sound was coming from where she had placed her baby, and having gone there, she was frightened at the sight before her.

“There is another scary story my mother told me about how a cobra once coiled around me in the bush while she was weeding on the farm. I was still a baby and, as usual, she had found a safe place under a particular tree to lay me down so she could carry on with her weeding. In the course of the work, she heard a sharp hiss and raised her head spontaneously to look around, her ears on the alert.

“She was sure she had heard a sound, but she could not tell the direction from which it came. As she bent to resume work, the ugly noise came again and this time, my mother got the direction clearer. It was coming from the place she had put me. Alarmed by the unusual sound, she dropped her cutlass and ran to the place I was lying. To her horror, she saw a big cobra coil around me. It was a petrifying scene indeed,” he wrote in the book.

Dr. Daniel McKorley added that when later his mother would tell him about what happened, she said the reptile had coiled all around him, and not knowing what she would do at that moment, she only paced up and down, speechless at what was unfolding before her eyes.

He added that she also told him that she was able to pray, which she said was her only weapon against the situation until the snake, without any provocation, uncoiled itself from him.

“’Fear gripped me as I stood, watching the dreadful reptile crawl all over my baby,’ my mother would later say as she narrated the nightmarish incident to me a few years ago. I do not know why my mother kept that creepy story from me for all those years; perhaps the incident sent chills down her spine anytime she had to relive it through telling the story and she would rather keep it out of her memory as much as she could.

"’So, what did you do, Mama?’ I asked out of curiosity, my whole body feeling as though the cobra was still around me. ‘I was helpless. In fact, my only weapon then was prayer?’ In her helplessness, my mother began pacing restlessly around, her two hands on her head to indicate how distressed she was. She could not scream for help, tor She feared the snake might harm me out of fright. Finally, as if by some divine means, the serpent began to uncoil itself from me. With bated breath, my mother continued to watch the horrifying scene as the cobra slowly left the makeshift bed she had made for me out of rags, went under some dry leaves and slithered away,” he wrote in the book.

The McDan boss further explained how that scary incident did not only end there.

He added how, on their way back home, his mother said she again saw another cobra cross them on the way.

Further frightened, his mother became convinced that this was the same reptile that had coiled around her son only moments before.

“When she was sure it was actually gone, my mother rushed to the spot and picked me up, placing me in her arms, she scrutinised my body to see if she would find any marks - scratches or bites. Unsure that I was safe, she tied me on her back, packed her stuff and began to trot back home: the cobra had cut her day short. She needed to tell this tale-like story to others, and more importantly, she needed other people to examine her son. She would be utterly convinced her son was all right only after others had told her they could not see any marks on his body, but as it turned out, the cobra was not done with my mother and me yet.

"’As I was getting close to the house, I saw it again, crossing the path in front of me,’[ my mother recounted. She did not see any sign to prove it was the same snake, but her mind told her it was. She concluded then that the snake was sent on some evil mission, and that it was God who had intervened and saved her son and her. However, when she got home, she learned a different interpretation that made her change her mind about the whole incident.

"’If the snake were evil, it would have harmed the child long before you knew about it,’ explained one old woman who lived near us in the community. ‘The fact that you saw it again as you got nearer to the house was its attempt to show you it did not mean any harm,’” he added.

He concluded this chapter of his book by stating that from that time on, anybody who heard this story had a firm belief that it was because he was, even as a baby, a special child.

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