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Roy Halladay passes on snake wrestling, intoxicating bark

Feb 21, 2012, 5:49 PM EDT

Roy Halladay Getty Images

Roy Halladay isn’t generally known for his interesting interviews. However, his winter getaway fishing on the Amazon provided him with a couple of fun anecdotes today.

According to legend, Halladay, who went to Brazil with Chris Carpenter and B.J. Ryan, wrestled an anaconda in the river. That wasn’t exactly the case, though.

“I was not wrestling snakes,” he said. “I was nowhere near snakes. We were just driving back. We had been fishing all day and we were on the boat driving back. We happened to see a guy sitting on the shoreline without clothes. We couldn’t talk to him. The guides had to talk to him – they were speaking Portuguese. He had been attacked by a snake and escaped. But it had ripped the engine off his boat and left all his stuff out in the river. So we picked up his stuff, picked him up, and drove him back to his tribe I guess you would call it.”

And the reward for his good deed? Well, it seems he passed.

“They have native trees down there,” Halladay said. “The bark’s a little potent when you smoke it, and I think he was partaking of that. It was interesting.”

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