The Stockers' Stories

I’ve been avoiding writing about snakes because we’re hoping my mom will come to visit someday, but I just can’t ignore it any longer. The place where we live is called Nanjoka, which translates roughly as “place of snakes.” And we’ve had our share.
We had seen black mamba (or at least they were probably mamba) a couple of times around the yard, but that was shortly after we moved here, and we haven’t seen any since.

Then we had a couple of invaders of our home a few months ago. One was a blindsnake, which I just swept out the door. The other was a green bush snake, which acts extremely dangerous but is in fact harmless to humans. Unfortunately, we weren’t sure what that one was, so we killed it as well, much to the dismay of Tom, a herpetologist friend of ours.

The problem with bush snakes is that they can be easily mistaken for the boomslang, which is a poisonous snake that hides in trees and is known for biting people’s heads as they pass by (although I’m not sure how much of that to believe). A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to see a Malawian friend trying to knock a boomslang out of a tree just outside of our house, so he could beat it to death with a bamboo pole.

I also had the opportunity to dispatch another snake last week, but much to the chagrin of the other residents of the farm, I didn’t do it. (Aren’t you proud of me, Tom?) Mrs. Nasho came to our house around 9PM asking me to bring the gun–among my jobs on the farm is being the keeper of the gun. It turns out there was a “huge” python that was attacking some puppies, and they couldn’t get close enough to it with bamboo poles. In fact, the python was probably only a metre long, 1.5 metres at the most–it’s hard to judge when it’s all curled up around its prey.

While I was trying to decide what to do, not really wanting the shoot the poor thing or the puppies that were all around it, it got tired of all of the attention and slithered away. I stretched my arm deep into the hole and pulled out the two puppies that I could reach, which in this culture was rather a shocking thing to do. Risking my own life (?!) to save a couple of dogs. Their response was to tear apart the road to expose the tunnel the snake was hiding in, and to shove burning grass into every available crevice.  I’m sure they’re still talking about this crazy white man who doesn’t shoot the snake but reaches down in the hole while the snake is still alive.

That’s probably a good enough story for a blog article, but tonight was the clincher. Shep, our border collie, was barking insistently at something outside, so Penny asked me to go out and investigate. Shep had found a snake, unlike any that I had ever seen. It had the head of a viper, was very thick, and maybe 1 metre long, with a distinctive pattern on its back. So I went back in the house and got the camera. Actually, this time it might have been better if I had gotten the gun.

At first, the snake was arched into a ready-to-strike position, but after I was out there with a lantern it decided to retreat. At first I thought that it was hissing at me, but I was hearing the slow scraping of scales across stone. It was so loud that Penny could hear it in the house! I got a couple of photos of the retreating snake, as it crawled down into a crevice under the rock that I always stand on when I’m trying to find signal for my phone.

Happily we have both electricity and internet service right now, so I was able to do some research on the snake. And it is (drumroll, please) a puff adder. Which, according to Wikipedia, is
“responsible for more fatalities than any other African snake. This is due to a combination of factors, including its wide distribution, common occurrence, large size, potent venom that is produced in large amounts, long fangs, their habit of basking by footpaths and sitting quietly when approached.”

I’m sorry, Tom, but the next time I see one of those someplace where the kids play, I’m getting the gun.