Durban — A northern KwaZulu-Natal snake rescuer was knocked off his feet and bitten twice by a lengthy and heavy southern African python recently.
Recalling the rescue, Zam Paulik said that on the day of the Durban July, the phone rang and he had a hysterical guy on the other side. He was very anxious.
“We spoke about it and when he told me what the estimated size was, he was talking about seven metres with a hell of a big girth,” Paulik said.
It was for a python in the Windsor Dam area.
He said he could not do the rescue alone, and would need help. He called a friend who was unavailable, but a man living near him volunteered to go with him.
“When I got there, the snake was lying there. I’ve never seen one in such a good condition, but I’ve also never had one as aggro (aggressive) as that … So they obviously taunted it before I got there and it was lying under a dead tree that had been cut off.
“So we hooked it out and I pulled it out with my hook, and it started trailing for my van … if it gets into the engine you’re not gonna get it out,” Paulik said.
He said that he had broken his ankle a couple of years ago and it was operated on, but it was still not good. He loses his footing quite easily.
“It came for me, I managed to grab it but I lost my footing. I had quite a fall but I managed to hold on to it. Then after that, it’s history,” Paulik stated.
He said he had a bag, especially for pythons.
“I kept it at home that night, in the bag.”
Paulik said that the next day he phoned the people at Nambiti Game Reserve and spoke to the chief warden, and they agreed to meet him to showvhim wher eto release it.
“That’s where I roughly measured it,” Paulik said.
“I won’t put any money on it but it’s about 6.4m, but it could be 6.3m or 6.5m because when I put it down, it was ice cold. I walked next to it because it needs to be fairly straight, in a straight line to measure it, for accuracy.
“When I got to eyesight with this one, it turned and attacked me again,” Paulik said. “The night that I caught it, it bit me on my arm and I fell and on my leg. I actually had stitches, it drew blood.”
Paulik said he thinks he is getting a bit old for this.
“I tried weighing it but it was more than 30kg,” he said.
He added that in his career, he had rescued quite a number of pythons.
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