A Rugged Ranger Remembers

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My Introduction to the Bush  - Waterburg Hide Away (The Snake)

Out of the blue I got a phone call from a farmer.  “Be here in 10 minutes or I’m going to shoot it.” He said.  Slamming down the phone I rushed back to my tent and grabbed my  snake catching stick from the foot of my sleeping bag.  He had sounded serious and I didn’t want him carrying out his threat.

As a child growing up in the Eastern Cape of South Africa where I attended boarding school from the age of nine and holidays spent in Malawi – ‘The warm Heart of Africa’, the bush and nature were an integral part of my being.  Shoes were things that other kids wore on their feet, and dogs were animals that lived in other people’s houses.  To say that my upbringing was odd is an understatement!  I was happiest trekking through the bush with my pet mongoose.  He would come on game drive with me and was the best spotter I have ever had.  He saw and heard things well before I did.  We’d both flip over stones during our walks looking for centipedes and scorpions, burrowing in holes to see what would come out, and climbing trees to see the colour of the eggs in the nest.  Life was bliss.  So when the time came to find a job, location was most important to me. 
Deep in the Waterburg Mountains was a lodge called Waterburg Hideaway which was ideal for me.  This is where my long and fulfilling career as a game ranger started.  I had only been there a few weeks, but already the locals knew about my love for the bush, and snakes in particular.  Hence the phone call from the farmer :-
Squeaker the mongoose and I dashed to the bakkie.  On the way we collected six lodge workers to help with this snake evacuation task.  They didn’t come willingly.  When asking locals their ideas about  snakes, they would always reply that the only good snake was a dead one.  The farmer had said that this snake was huge and that it was eating all of his chickens.  He had explained to me the direction that the snake had headed after its latest raid on his chicken coup. 

We followed the clearly defined trail – it was indeed a very big snake – which lead to a warthog hole.  I was pretty sure it was a python, so I crawled into the hole head first with a torch to check out how big it actually was.  “Oh, my gosh,” I thought, “This snake is enormous.” She had seen me wiggling my way deeper into her hole and had pushed her body along the walls of the burrow.  I tried to get a grip on her head to pull her out, but she was having none of it!

Then I was struck by a moment of brilliance : I’d get a rope from the bakkie and pull her out with the vehicle.  I looped a long piece of rope around the tow-bar and slithered back down the hole to try and lasso her head with the other end.  By now she was spitting mad and kept lashing out at me every time I made the slightest movement.  Trying to anticipate her next thrust I extended my hand with the rope towards her as she struck.  The rope finally slipped over her enormous head and I tightened it up and slithered backwards out of the hole. 

Climbing back into the bakkie I slowly accelerated and after a long game of tug-o-war she finally shot out of the warthog hole with astonishing speed.  Once she was safely on level ground I turned the vehicle off and approached her with caution. 

The saying “As mad as a snake” immediately popped into my mind.  She was writhing and lashing out at anyone who came near.  Approaching her as slowly and as quietly as I could I eventually managed to grasp her by the head.  I had to hold on with both hands.  She was so powerful that it took all seven of us to finally subdue her.  We estimated that she was close to seven meters long and it took six people to hold her up.  It was like holding a rope, she looped and waved between each of us.
After successfully bundling her into a duvet cover we drove back to Waterburg Hideaway to release her on the game farm.  Before I released her I checked her mouth to see that she wasn’t bleeding and that she was in a good and healthy condition.  I noticed that she was full of eggs – so many eggs.  I tried not to stress her out too much so I just ran my hands over her powerful body and felt egg after egg after egg.  I counted more than 80 eggs as she slithered off into the bush. 

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