Durban snake rescuer Nick Evans ended his longest-ever “mamba drought” when he caught one on Friday.
“I caught my first black mamba since the 11th of June, ending my longest-ever mamba drought,” said Evans.
He said that although winter is often thought of as a period when snakes are inactive, the season is actually the time that black mambas mate and it is usually a fairly busy mamba catching time for him. Not this winter, however, even though it has been a warm one, bar two or three cold spells.
Recalling the black mamba rescue, Evans said he received a call from a lady in Westville, whose home he had been to a few times in the past to rescue Mozambique spitting cobras.
“This time, she hadn't seen a snake, however, her dog, Benji, had been barking at something hiding under an outside table. She immediately recognised the bark as his ‘snake bark’, as he was generally the one who had found the cobras in the past, and yes, had been spat at before too. I could hear him barking wildly over the phone,” Evans said.
Evans said that usually, he is extremely sceptical of going out on calls where a snake has not been seen, but knowing this dog and property, he knew he should investigate.
He said the caller had called Benji away from the snake’s hiding place by the time he arrived and was watching that it had not slithered out from under the table.
He said that he walked over, started recording a video with his phone, with the flash on, and held his phone down into a space, with the camera aiming under the wooden planks at the bottom, as looking in himself was difficult.
“I immediately saw some ventral (belly) scales appear on the screen, with the flash reflecting off of them. ‘Cobra’, I said, as their ventral scales are often very obvious. I studied the screen for a second or two longer, and realised I had clearly gone too long without seeing a black mamba because this was no cobra!” Evans said.
“I was very relieved to find it was a non-spitting snake!”
Evans said his wife, Joelle, had gone with him to the rescue because he needed help.
The planks on the bottomof the table were rotten and broken and could be lifted just enough for him to extract the mamba, and doing both would be tricky. So, Joelle got a stick, lifted and helped up the planks, while he went about extracting the mamba, Evans said.
He said that on his phone, the mamba did not look big, maybe 2.2m at most.
“We quickly realised our estimation was off, once I started pulling it out. It was bigger than we thought!
“The 2.5m mamba didn't put up too much of a resistance, and made for a relatively easy catch. It's slightly underweight, although not yet anything to be concerned about. It's an old-looking animal, with quite a large head for a mamba,” Evans said.
He said that then, the most unbelievable thing happened.
“While I had the mamba in my hands, the gardener from next door came running in, telling us about a big snake that slithered from the property he was working in, to the one I was at,” Evans said.
‘I've got it’, I told him, showing him what I was holding, Evans said.
‘No, it's like that, but a different one, it's there now’, the gardener said.
Apparently, it was on the other side of the house, Evans said.
He said that he and Joelle hurriedly got the mamba he had caught into a bucket, before running around the property, not believing what was happening.
Evans said that the back garden was an extension of the Palmiet Nature Reserve, and so the bush was thick, with a cliff just above the property.
“Unfortunately, I couldn't find the snake. However, I could hear Collared Sunbirds going wild at what must have been this second mamba, in the bush, close to where the gardener last saw it.”
He said it would have been quite something to have got that one too.
“This call reminded me that it is so important to understand your dog, for many reasons. In this case, if the owner had ignored her dog, and left it to keep going at the snake, her dog likely would have attacked the snake once it came out (Benji couldn't get to it where it was). Benji might have killed the mamba, but in doing so, would have been bitten and likely would have died as a result. So grateful that that scenario didn't unfold. Or, if she ignored Benji's warnings, she might have ended up with a mamba in her home!” Evans said.
“We were all so impressed with Benji for finding the snake and alerting his owner. I believe he got a nice dinner.
"He was fearless with the mamba, although with my GoPro, he was, like most dogs, not happy. So if he looks a bit nervous in the screenshot below, that's why,” Evans laughed.
“Well done to both for how they reacted!”
Evans said that it was nice to have some mamba “fun” after a tough winter.
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