Snake Rescue East Coast Radio - Catch Up

When Nick Evans get calls for a Mozambique Spitting Cobra in a property where there are dogs, he always worries. Cobras don't attack dogs, but dogs attack them, and other snakes. If the dog does attack, they're in for a nasty surprise, as some of these dogs at a home in Hillary found out.

"It's like a snakes version of pepper spray!" says Nick.

"Most of the time the snake escapes unharmed. Most of the time."

And very, very rarely do dogs get bitten. They usually just get temporarily blinded. A far better result, of course if treated, than a life-threatening cobra bite.

IF YOUR DOG GETS SPAT AT BY A COBRA:

Firstly, get your dogs away from the snake. Then, with help from a family member, you need to rinse the venom out of the eyes with water. A hose pipe on low pressure or bottle of water works well. Don't use a bowl.
Rinse as best as you can, but holding a dog still for this can be difficult.
If you succeed, it's a good idea to take your dog to your local vet for a check up and eye drops to sooth the pain.
If you are not managing, take the dog to the vet, and they can maybe sedate it and treat it effectively.

Imagine doing a little gardening, only to discover a deadly snake coiled up in the leaves! That's exactly what happened to a Durban homeowner who got one major surprise when she realised she wasn't just raking up leaves.
A Puff Adder had chosen her leaf-covered lawn to get cosy! That's when she called Snake Rescue's Nick Evans, who raced to the Upper Highway area to help.

Puff Adders have keeled scales, giving their skin a slightly rough appearance as opposed to the smooth and sometimes shiny appearance of many other snake species.

This, coupled with their chevron patters and mixed colors (usually yellow and black in Midlands, Drakensberg and shades of brown in Northern KZN), allows them to camouflage in the undergrowth really, really well.

They thrive in grassland and savanna areas.

On this occasion, it was in a garden, in a situation where it could easily have been stepped on!

Puff Adders are responsible for many bites throughout South Africa and the rest of Africa.

Interestingly, research has shown more often than not, if stepped on, they won't bite. Of course you don't know if your luck is in or not.

"A friend of mine did telemetry tracking of Puff Adders. On more than one occasion, while trying to spot his signal-emitting Puff Adder in the Bush, he found it under his shoe! And they never bit him," says Nick.

Imagine seeing a very large Black Mamba casually slithering into your home, through the lounge and down the passage, past your child's bathroom, and into a bedroom? It happened in Reservoir Hills recently, and Nick Evans rushed to the rescue.

During Lockdown Level 3, Snake Rescue's Nick Evans received a call to help retrieve a Black Mamba from a storeroom at horse stables on the KZN North Coast.

A large storage area full of big boxes and all sorts of things for a snake to hide under or behind-not an ideal situation for a snake catcher, but a great place for a Black Mamba!

Nick had lots to move at these stables. It was hard work in hot weather!

"The mamba was trying its best to stay hidden away from me, showing how these snakes would rather avoid conflict than have it."

On this Snake Rescue call, Nick Evans went to remove a Black Mamba from a perfect mamba hotel. It was securely tucked away in a garage roof on a Westville property! The garage roof provided warmth and shelter, and probably the odd rat for the snake. And in the water drains below, along the roadside, were an abundance of Dassies, whose young are a favorite meal for Black Mambas. The property also had a nature reserve in the back yard. All in all, prime mamba habitat.

However, not everyone wants a Black Mamba in the garage roof, and so it had to go. But it wasn't going to go easy, as Nick was to discover!

This was a really exciting call out for Nick Evans because it was for a snake he hadn't caught in years - a Forest Cobra!

"This snake really played hard to get, and it took a few trips to actually catch it. On one of those trips, we worked for ages, doing proper manual labour. It all paid off in the end!" recalls Nick.

* More from Nick: Forest Cobras are a beautiful snake species found on the KZN North Coast, and become more and more common further north. So not a snake we see around Durban. And unlike our Durban cobra (the Mozambique Spitting Cobra), Forest Cobras do not spit. Nice for the likes of me! They have an interesting, two-toned color appearance. The front half is a yellowish-brown color, and it darkens towards the tail end. The tail end is pitch black. They have a shiny appearance. Like all of our cobras, they are highly venomous. They can also hood up, impressively, too. But if given half a chance, they'll flee, not wanting confrontation.