He laughed. ‘Not this time. It’s going to be hard for my mum and dad to adjust in a foreign country. I’m going along to help out.’
I nodded, knowing how close he was to his family.
‘Anything we can do to make you stay?’
‘Afraid not, boss. It’s been a terribly difficult decision and as much as I’m going to miss Thula Thula and you guys, I have to go with my folks.’
‘We’re going to miss you too.’
He left later that month. It was a melancholic day as I shook his hand for the last time as his ‘boss’.
Being David, with his inextinguishable cheerfulness, he soon landed on his feet in Britain and joined the British Army. He was selected for an officer’s course at the world-famous Sandhurst Military Academy and did a tour of combat duty in Afghanistan as an officer – where I believe his outdoor skills and natural leadership skills helped make him a superb officer.
chapter thirty-four
There hadn’t been a snakebite on Thula Thula for nearly sixty years. The previous owners had been here for fifty years without incident and we had been bite free for the eight years we had been here.
This is not surprising, for although Thula Thula, like every African game reserve slithers with serpents of all types and sizes, these intriguing reptiles avoid man for three very good reasons. Firstly, they don’t want to get stomped on and will move away long before you get near them; secondly, humans are not their prey; and thirdly, they have long since learned that we will kill them for no other reason than that they exist.
The only exception to the first proviso is the puff adder. It relies on its dull yellow-brown and black colouring as camouflage, and will not budge however close you come. It has a thick body, averaging about three feet in length, and because it is so aggressive it is responsible for more deaths in African than any other snake. Every veteran ranger has at some time stood on – or almost on – an immobile puffy, only noticing afterwards that he or she has just missed a deadly injection of venom. They just don’t move, sometimes even if you stand on them. But they do bite, faster than you can jump.
Dispelling myths about snakes opens the minds of visitors to appreciating and perhaps even befriending thesefascinating creatures that are so vital to the environment, particularly in keeping down rodent populations.
There is, however, one snake that is a law unto itself.
‘We’ve just lost two zebra,’ said John Tinley, the veteran ranger from KZN Wildlife’s Fundimvelo reserve next door who had stopped in for a cup of tea one day. ‘Both dead, right next to the waterhole, fat and healthy, no sign of disease and not a mark on them.’
He looked at me waiting for comment, testing me.
‘OK, what happened?’ I said, taking the game out of it.
‘Black mamba,’ he replied, blowing on his hot tea. ‘Killed both of them. Stone dead.’
‘You’re having me on,’ I said sitting up. ‘A mamba killed two adult zebra?’
He clicked his fingers. ‘Just like that. They were history when we got there. They must have frightened the damn thing, or stood on it … or something.’
‘You’re sure?’ I asked, amazed at what I was hearing. A zebra can weigh 600 pounds. ‘Two of them?’
‘The spoor doesn’t lie. There isn’t another snake that leaves marks like that. You may have seen the fire. I burned the bodies. Don’t want anybody or anything eating that meat, not even hyena.’
As soon as he was gone I got on the phone and after a couple of calls I sank back in my chair. He was right, a mamba can easily kill a zebra; in fact it can kill almost anything – lion, towering kudu bulls … even giraffe have been dropped. As for humans, one mamba packs enough venom to kill up to forty adults.
It grows up to fifteen feet long and is as thick as a man’s arm. It’s also the fastest snake around, sometimes hurtling along with its head three or four feet above the ground. To complete the picture, it’s not actually black; more of a metal grey. However, the inside of its mouth is pitch-black, henceits name. The sight of a mamba almost gliding with its coffin-shaped head raised several feet above a grassy plain is the ultimate game-viewing experience.
Several days afterwards, I was in my office when I heard Biyela shouting at the top of his voice.
‘Mkhulu, come quick! Mamba!’ The word galvanized me and I grabbed my shotgun, locked up Max, and bolted outside to find Biyela standing at the rear of the house, backed up against a storeroom wall, pointing.
‘Mamba!’ he shouted again.
I put my finger to my lips to get him to lower his voice. He nodded, thankful for the presence of the shotgun and pointed to a small fenced-off courtyard which housed general bric-a-brac.
‘It went in there.’
‘You sure it was a mamba?’ I asked, aware that for Biyela all snakes are automatically mambas.
‘Ngempela – absolutely.’
As a rule we never kill snakes. Even with a black mamba we try for a catch and release into the bush. But if something so lethal looked like it was going to escape into the house, I wouldn’t hesitate to shoot it. The last thing I wanted was several slithering yards of venom surfacing in one of the bedrooms or settling down behind some sofa cushions.
We edged closer and suddenly Biyela grabbed my sleeve and we watched the tail disappearing – of all places into our open bedroom window.
‘Damn!’ I exclaimed as I started running back around to the front door with Biyela hot on my heels.
We rounded the still-open front door at a dash and bolted through into the bedroom and stopped dead. Edging in, we cautiously scanned the area immediately around us, then the floor of the room, and then the poles spanning the thatched roof above us. Nothing,
