Students remember Monty Python, the letter 'S'

Thu, 02/09/2012 - 7:30am

Images

Grandchildren of Steve and Kaylana Gertsch pose with Monty Python. The snake died Jan. 29 after 27 years as a class pet. (Photo courtesy of Steve and Kaylana Gertsch)

Plain City Elementary School science teacher Steve Gertsch purchased Monty Python 27 years ago, when the snake was 3 years old. Monty helped him teach lessons in the classroom and helped both students and teachers overcome their fear of snakes, he says. Monty died Jan. 29. (Photo courtesy of Steve and Kaylana Gertsch)

Monty was a ‘kid magnet,’ says Plain City Elementary science teacher Steve Gertsch, who made a python a classroom pet for 27 years. (Photo courtesy of Steve and Kaylana Gertsch)

Monty poses with Maxwell Thompson, grandson of snake owners Steve Gertch and his wife, Kaylana. (Photo courtesy of Steve and Kaylana Gertsch)

PLAIN CITY -- One of Plain City's best-known and most-beloved celebrity residents has passed away. Monty Python, 30, was a muscular 70 pounds and measured 10 feet 6 inches tall, uh, long.

Monty is survived by Plain City Elementary School science teacher Steve Gertsch and his wife, Kaylana.

He will be mourned by more than 2,700 current and former students who played with the mild-mannered Burmese python over his 27 years as a classroom teaching tool and ambassador from the reptile world.

Gertsch and Monty taught at Plain City Elementary for all but a few years, when they taught at Highland Junior High School in Ogden.

The snake's obituary, published on the Plain City Elementary website, www.pce.weber.k12.ut.us/joomla, marked Monty's passing with this:

"This winter, in his aging years, Monty Python, Mr. Gertsch's most notorious class pet, caught a cold which settled in his lungs and became pneumonia. Monty Python slipped into a coma and passed away peacefully on Sunday evening, January 29, 2012. ... Monty helped many students (not quite as many teachers) overcome their fear of snakes."

Gertsch recalled how a kindergarten teacher "used to teach her students the letter 'S' by laying them on the floor and having Monty slither over them."

"They would squeal with delight, and they never forgot 'S.' This year, the second-graders won a reading contest and were allowed to choose the kind of party they wanted.

"Did they want an ice cream party? No, they wanted a Monty party. That snake was a kid magnet, and he taught children to get over their fears.

"I was taken aback by the reactions of the parents who remembered Monty from their own childhoods and were upset to learn that Monty has passed away."

When Monty shed his skin, children would beg for a piece to take home, Gertsch said, "so a little bit of Monty is still with us, probably in hundreds of homes in Plain City."

Gertsch, 60, said he wasn't really sure what he was looking for 27 years ago when he went shopping for a class pet.

"Everyone told me to get something different," he said. "I could have bought a rabbit or a bird, but then I saw a picture on the pet shop wall for a python being sold by a private owner, and I thought, 'Well, that's different.' "

The juvenile python cost $450, which included a Plexiglas-front cage about the size of an upright piano, outfitted with a large branch hanging from chains. The python, then 5 feet long and of insubstantial girth, already had his pop-culture name.

"I think Monty Python was a British comedian," Gertsch said.

The teacher borrowed the snake and raised payment by letting his students sell Polaroid photos of Monty, which cost $1 to make, for $2.

Before long, Monty was at home for good in Gertsch's science room. Food -- dead rodents -- was a major expense until the University of Utah Comparative Medicine Department decided to donate frozen rats and mice from its breeding program to aid in Monty's educational mission.

Often, Monty wandered the classroom freely, under the teacher's watchful eye, and was allowed unsupervised slithering in the closed classroom when students went to lunch.

After one lunch period, Monty was nowhere to be found -- until a student spied him peeking through a hole where some rubber trim was missing between the floor and lower wall. Gertsch set his electric saw blade at the exact depth needed to remove drywall without harming the snake.

Monty, a notoriously slow slitherer, also ventured outdoors with Gertsch and his students. The students were never left alone with the snake, and all had been trained on how to treat Monty with careful respect and were told to avoid strange snakes in nature because not all snakes were as nice as Monty.

The python had at least one adventure at the Gertsch family home, in Farr West.

Moved to the family farmhouse during a winter vacation, the snake started to chill when the power went out for several days.

Gertsch knew the snake was in mortal danger, and he had trained his wife, Kaylana, to be a good sport.

"When we were married three weeks, he came home with a garter snake and a frog, put them in the bathtub and told me, 'Your education is about to begin,' " Kaylana Gertsch recalled.

The snake unlatched its jaw and swallowed his tub mates.

"I knew it was too late for me to back out," Kaylana said of her marriage. "I was hooked into the whole 'eternity' thing."

So back when the power went out, Gertsch asked his wife to help keep Monty alive by letting him sleep between them in bed. Almost immediately, the snake abused his privilege, and the Gertsches heard an explosive sound.

"He did what he always did three days after I fed him," Steve Gertsch said with an embarrassed smile.

Monty, who Gertsch said lived about 10 years longer than the average Burmese python in captivity, was laid to rest in the Gertsch family pet cemetery, under a rock.

Surviving class pets include a tarantula, a yellow rat snake, a Montana blow snake, a bearded dragon lizard, a tiger salamander and a chipmunk that was orphaned as an infant.

But none of them are Monty. Plain City Elementary third-grader Madison Nelson wrote one of several tributes to the beloved python.

"No one should cry. They should look in their heart and imagine that he's still there. I will never forget you, Monty."

Tributes

Students from Plain City Elementary School wrote the following tributes to Monty Python:

* "We're all very sad about what happened, and wish Monty could still be here with us. He's the best pet the school's ever had. Even though he's gone, he's still our friend." -- Macy Park, fourth-grader

* "Monty was an awesome snake, even though he scared me half to death in third grade science. I was just sitting there, doing a worksheet, and Mr. Gertsch had him out. Mr. Gertsch came up to my desk and I was very unaware. I looked up to come face to face with a huge python. I screamed and fell backwards. It was hilarious.

"So Monty will be missed by hundreds of people in Plain City. Maybe even thousands." -- Sarah Hicks, sixth-grader