‘This is unbelievable. A mamba in our bedroom and we can’t find it? A bloody mamba for Pete’s sake! Where the hell is it?’
‘They are like ghosts,’ Biyela replied.
Dismayed, I suddenly I heard Françoise chatting outside with some of the staff. ‘What do you mean there’s a mamba in my bedroom? Where’s Lawrence?’
‘Hi. I’m here in the lounge!’ I called out, trying to sound unconcerned.
She walked in with Bijou scampering at her heels. ‘What’s all this nonsense about a mamba in our bedroom?’
‘Well … maybe. I think there was one but now … well, maybe it’s gone.’ I nodded sternly as if I was in total control of the situation.
‘You’re not sure if there is a mamba in our room?’ She stood on tiptoes peering over my shoulder through the bedroom door. ‘Well, OK oh great white hunter. I’m sleeping at the lodge tonight and if you are so sure it’s gone you can stay here. Just make sure your will is up to date.’
Then Bijou, who had somehow slipped past us, started growling from the bedroom and I instinctively knew she had found it. Or worse, maybe the deadly snake had found her.
I hurtled back into the bedroom. In the middle of the floor was the poodle … and rearing itself directly in front of her was … not a mamba but a full-grown Mozambican spitting cobra. A mfezi – Max’s favourite adversary. But unlike Max, who would quickly circle a reptile before striking, Bijou was no snake fighter.
The snake was in the classic attack position: head raised and hood flared, hypnotically focused on this bite-sized ball of fluff before it. Luckily, emboldened by our arrival, Bijoustarted prancing about and yapping for all she was worth, denying the lethal serpent a fixed target.
Now while an mfezi has enough venom to kill a man, it plummets way below a mamba on the snake Richter scale. Relief poured out of my system.
A black mamba, as mentioned earlier, is actually grey, almost the exact same top colour as a mfezi. From the tail slithering into the window Biyela and I had somehow mistaken one for the other. But my relief that it was ‘only’ a deadly Mozambican spitting cobra was soon tempered by the fact that if anything happened to Bijou, Françoise’s wrath would ensure I’d be on my way to the North Pole without a sleigh.
‘Lawrence! Do something!’
Adjusting my glasses closer to my face for protection against venom spray, then shutting my mouth (recently opened for a retort) for the same reason, I edged around the poised snake, scooped up the excited poodle and delivered her still yapping to Françoise.
Biyela then handed me my trusty snake-catching broom and I moved in cautiously, not wishing to antagonize Mr Mfezi any more than absolutely necessary. I manoeuvred the broom painfully slowly towards the erect serpent, which – as they usually do – allowed the bristle-head to be eased under its body. For some reason the reptile is not threatened by the broom. However, the momentum of the broom moving forward gently ‘trips’ the upright snake – which is only balancing on the bottom half of its body – onto the broom’s head. Once it collapses onto the broom head, it’s a simple matter of lifting the broom up by the handle with the snake still coiled on the far end and carrying it outside. I then released it a good distance from the house.
Hallelujah! Bijou was saved and I was accorded mega domestic hero status with Françoise. I was also pleased that a couple of trainee rangers had witnessed the capture andafterwards I went over the broom technique again with them, stressing that it only worked with cobras and they had to be upright in the attack position before you could edge the broom underneath the lower part of their body.
Unfortunately a few days later the impromptu lesson had serious unintended consequences.
‘Code Red! Snakebite at the main house!’ the rapid-fire call cranked out of the Land Rover’s radio as Brendan and I were parked out in the bush with the herd, watching Mandla playfully wrestling with the much larger Mabula.
Brendan’s reply was cool and calculated, just what was needed to calm the panic. ‘Who was bitten, where, and what type of snake?’
‘It’s the new trainee Brett. We think it may be a black mamba. We’re trying to find it so we can do the identification. ’
As the voice trailed off I felt sick to my stomach. Black mamba! Flooring the Land Rover’s accelerator I rushed back to the house in a blur, unable to get a word in among the frenetic radioactivity.
The drive from Thula Thula to the hospital in Empangeni was about forty minutes, way too long in case of a full-dose mamba bite, which can kill in half that time. Also, we didn’t keep mamba serum on the reserve. In fact nobody keeps it on hand, for the simple reason that it goes rotten after a short time. Sometimes the serum could kill you as surely as a bite.
‘God, I hope it’s not a mamba,’ I prayed. ‘And if it is, then not a big one.’
But I knew that didn’t matter, for even a day-old hatchling mamba packs enough venom to kill a full-grown man.
I pulled into the parking area behind our house in a billow of dust, leapt out and ran over to where the rangerswere gathered around a large dead snake, hoping against hope that it wasn’t a mamba.
It was.
‘Who took Brett to hospital?’ I asked.
‘Nobody. He wanted to pack a suitcase, but we’re going to take him now,’ came the absurd reply from another trainee.
‘What! Does he know it was a bloody mamba?’
‘Yes, but it was only a small bite on the finger.’
‘Only on the finger! For Pete’s sake – it’s a mamba! It doesn’t matter where it bit!’
I couldn’t believe what I was
