def load_vcf(path):
    """
    Takes the path to a VCF file and parses it into a list
    of tuples representing variants

        path (str): The path to a variant input file

        returns ([(str, str, str, str)]): The variant tuples
    """
    vcf_lines = [line.strip('\n') for line in open(path).readlines()]
    variant_lines = list(filter(lambda x: x[0] != "#", vcf_lines))
    variants = []
    for line in variant_lines:
        tkns = line.split('\t')
        variants.append((tkns[0], tkns[1], tkns[3], tkns[4]))
    return variants