| Pirozhko |
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Pirozhko was a pet adder owned by Bif Strogenov, a sailor aboard the SS Burya. Despite a ship policy that prohibited pets, Strogenov secretly took the snake on board, setting mouse traps to collect rodents for the reptile to eat. One of these could be found in the first-class passageway. Strogenov brought Pirozhko along due to the prospect of living on a steamship for an entire year without a close companion.
The speckled band[]
- Main article: The Adventure of the Unbreakable Speckled Band
Coiled around Strogenov's head.
On January 7, Herlock Sholmes triggered the ship's emergency stop, scaring off Pirozhko. Sholmes found the snake and headed to first-class cabin 002, where a group had formed, to announce that he had solved the case of Asogi's murder. As he did so, the snake suddenly wrapped himself around Strogenov's head, preventing him from explaining that Pirozhko was his pet. Thus, wholly oblivious to this fact, Sholmes claimed that, despite having a striped skin pattern, the snake was the "speckled band" that Kazuma Asogi had written about in his diary on the previous night.
Sholmes explained that the snake was the pet of the cabin's occupant, Nikolina Pavlova, who had trained him to travel through a vent connecting her cabin to his and fell Asogi with a venomous bite. On that fateful night, the snake had supposedly done the deed, then shed his skin. Pavlova even seemed to glance toward the snake during this explanation, and involuntarily revealed what was deemed the snake's shed skin. Sholmes also "deduced" that the snake had been controlled via a combination of giving him milk and using a whistle to summon him.
However, Susato Mikotoba pointed out that the facts didn't match Sholmes's "logic": Pirozhko wouldn't drink milk, wouldn't have been able to hear whistles due to a lack of ears, and would have been unable to physically reach the crime scene unaided. Ryunosuke Naruhodo corrected Sholmes, revealing that Pavlova had actually glanced at a photograph of her and a kitten, and that the "shed skin" was actually a cat's toy. Afterward, Pirozhko loosened his grip on Strogenov, who was finally able to reveal that the snake was actually his pet and was not even venomous.
Personality[]
According to Strogenov, Pirozhko is gentle and completely harmless. However, he gets irritated when hungry, such as when he wrapped his head around Strogenov after being found by Sholmes.
Name[]
- His Japanese and English names are likely a play on "pirozhok", a type of puff pastry originating in Russia and Ukraine.