Black mamba caught after hiding in wall of house for weeks

Snake catcher Nick Evans had to use a hammer and chisel to break a wall after a distraught family called him to catch a black mamba in their house.

Evans was about to begin a snake awareness talk at a school when he received the call from the residents of the house in Clermont, near Durban. They told him the snake had been there for weeks.

“I told them I’d be there as soon as my talk ended. They’d already been living with it for weeks, so I figured a short while wouldn’t be a problem,” said Evans.

He was told the mamba was hiding between the top of the wall and the roof.

“When I arrived, the mamba’s head was still visible at the top of a very high wall. I put my ladder up against the wall, climbed up expecting to see a mamba lying across the wall. Instead, there was nothing,” said Evans. “I then noticed a hole, in the building block. The mamba was in the wall!”

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The residents told the snake catcher to break the wall. “They were sick of this snake being there,” he said.

As Evans eventually broke through the wall’s blocks, the snake dashed to the top of the wall.

Evans said he got excited as he thought he’d be able to catch the mamba. The snake, however, quickly slithered into another hole in the wall to evade capture.

“Now we had to break another hole,” lamented Evans.

As he started breaking another hole in the wall, the mamba shot up again.

“I grabbed it, and using two tongs, held the body while I pulled the head towards me, and grabbed it with my hand,” said Evans.

He expressed relief that he had finally caught the venomous snake, after trying to catch it for around one-and-a-half hours.

Evans said the mamba was about 2.1 metres long.

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