Black Mamba and Mozambique Spitting Cobra rescued in Queensburgh
Nick Evans, a local snake catcher, has been waiting impatiently for his first Black Mamba rescue of 2022 and the call finally came this week.
ECSTATIC doesn’t even come close to describing how Nick Evans, a local snake catcher, felt after rescuing his first Black Mamba in the New Year.
“I’ve been impatiently waiting for my first mamba of the year and, today, I finally got called for one in the Bellair area,” he said.
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According to Evans, the homeowner’s dog alerted the family to the slithering intruder in the garden.
“It slithered up and over a short wall and, just on the other side of the wall, in a vacant property, was a barrel, filled with wood and a lot of plastic,” said Evans.
The snake sought refuge in the old, rusted barrel, which made it difficult for Evans to rescue it as he was unable to see the snake.
“I started pulling out the wood that was so rotten it just broke away. Then, the piles of plastic bags which, of course, kept getting caught on all of the rusted metal. Then, at one tug of the plastic, I suddenly saw the mamba, shooting out towards me! I stood up and, like me, it got a fright, so it turned back in,” he said.
It was only after all the plastic was removed from the barrel that Evans could see the snake.
“I grabbed the neck with the tongs. It started reversing, but I couldn’t get my hand there. I let it reverse back into the barrel, and pulled it out from there,” he said.
As soon as Evans caught the 2m Black Mamba, he was called to rescue a Mozambique Spitting Cobra in the Queensburgh area.
“The homeowner had done most of the work needed to catch the 1.2m specimen,” said Evans.
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