No sooner do I manage to evict an unwanted Congolese from my apartment than I’m busy trying to evict an unwanted Mocambican! This time from my bakkie – my new home.
I went to see what the glossy starlings were shriekingly unhappy about, as we were packing the bakkie to leave the camp – and leave the park. And it was this Mocambique Spitting Cobra at our hut steps, about a metre long. In Shingwedzi camp, Kruger national park.
When I approached the Mfezi, he turned left into my mag wheel and climbed up into the engine bay; and so I phoned the rangers who soon arrived – many of them, one with long handling tongs.
But all of them agreed rather to wait for Shadrack. ‘He’s a qualified field ranger who handles snakes. He’s been trained,’ they said, standing way back. The gang of capable-looking, officially-dressed, but caution-is-the-better-part-of-valour rangers (who were mostly ‘in admin’) grew, as word got around camp; Then a Zim couple from a caravan across the road approached. ‘What’s up? A spitting cobra? Oh we know that snake. He has visited us a few times the last couple weeks.’ Turns out they have camped on that spot for a full year this month! And I thought our three weeks in the park was lengthy! They also had a coupla pythons visit their caravan and watched them until they were back in the bush outside the camp fence, telling them shoo.
Once Shadrack the braver ranger arrived, he took the tongs. We tried to grip the Mfezi from the front (him) and flush from behind (me) but he spat at us and coiled around things, so in the end we thought whoa! Also, the Zim camper said, Rather wait till he emerges vanself. So we moved off about ten metres away till Jess spotted him emerging at the front right wheel. Shadrack then got him, but he was wedged and not budging, so I fetched a mop handle to prize his rear end out so Shadrack could draw him out. After a while, Shadrack said, ‘I’m gonna have to let him go so he can breathe.’ I imagined him turning round and saying, So YOU’RE the oke pulling my tail! and spitting-cobra at me, so I said, Wait, Shadrack! Give me One More Try, and out he came like Abednigo, to be bundled into a big black rubbish bin and driven off to be released – the poor terrified and no doubt exhausted Mfezi – far from camp. What an ordeal for him.
I had ignored the glossy birds at first as they had been shouting the previous two days at two yellow-billed hornbills who were wanting to raid their nest hole. But that was just a pair of them. Today about eight of them were joined by a Crested Barbet and they were using really rude starlingese to tell the Mfezi he was unwelcome. One brave one flew at him a few times and slapped him in the face with her wing! Old Mfezi was stoic, like, ‘I know you ous don’t like me, but I’m just doing my job.’
~~oo0oo~~
bakkie – pickup; truck; ute; utility vehicle
Mfezi – Naja mossambica Mocambican Spitting Cobra
vanself – of his own volition; the Zim didn’t actually use that Afrikaans word tho
Zim – Zimbo; Zimbabwean
Shadrack, Meshack and Abednigo – 1960s Sunday school; Stella Euthimiou told me