Snake catcher Sarel ‘goes green’
Snake season is keeping the coast's snake catcher rather busy.
SOUTH Coast snake catcher, Sarel van der Merwe of Pure Venom Reptile Park, had a busy time last weekend.
Warmer days spark the start of snake season, when serpents awaken and begin looking to breed.
If Sarel isn’t catching green mambas, he is rescuing snakes that look like black mambas, with his passion and love for reptiles taking him to the most interesting places.
It took Sarel three days to rescue a 1.5-metre green mamba from a fertiliser shed at a sugar cane farm in Sunwich Port last week. “The staff refused to work until I removed the snake,” he said.
The snake disappeared on Monday while he was attempting to catch it and his mission was hampered when it rained on Tuesday.
On Wednesday, when the sun came out, he told the farmer to call him if he saw the mamba. Well, lo and behold, the snake appeared and Sarel managed to trap it.
He also rescued a ‘big green’, as he calls it, from a home in Sunwich Port after the homeowner cleverly lured the 1.5-metre snake into a large dustbin last Saturday.
After this catch, he safely removed another ‘big green’- measuring about two metres – from the Faerie Glen complex in Margate.
It doesn’t stop here.
Sarel drove for half-an-hour to respond to a phone call of a ‘black snake’ hiding in a hole in KwaMadlala, inland from Umtentweni. He explained that the ‘black snake’ was in fact a brown house snake, often mistaken for a black mamba.
“Community members were planting crops when the snake retreated into a hole. They were very happy when I took it safely away.”
Before harming or killing a snake, contact Sarel at 082 6831604 or Pure Venom at 039 6850704.
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