Rain or shine, snakes are out
Red-lipped Heralds – and cobras – in suburbs
SNAKES alive – Heralds are abounding. That is not just Nelson Mandela Bay’s favourite read, but also the red-lipped Herald snake, which was named by John Leslie after the newspaper reported his discovery in the late 1800s. Master snake catcher Mark Marshall said yesterday he was having to deal with about two a day since the recent rain showers in the Bay.
“The rain brings out the frogs, which bring out the Heralds and other frog feeders. I’ve also been called out to catch four rinkals and 13 night adders,” he said.
In between the rain, typical summer heat had triggered the appearance of Cape cobras, Marshall said.
“For the last three years, this has become cobra month. You just need four or five good hot days in December and the cobras come out.”
He said he had caught five cobras in the past 3½ weeks, two in Westering and three in Malabar.
The suburbs lie on either side of the “cobra belt”, an open section of dry and rocky grassy fynbos where 90% of Port Elizabeth’s cobras live.
On Friday, he was called out at 6am to Summerville Avenue in Westering, where a resident had surprised a 1.7m cobra bulging out of a drawer in his kitchen.
According to a Facebook posting, which rapidly received 800 hits, the resident thought it was a frog and pulled the drawers slightly before he heard the warning hiss of a Cape cobra.
“It seems the front door was open late, allowing the snake to enter the house to sleep for the night.”
Just four hours later, Marshall received a call from a house in Baobab Street a few blocks away, and before that he got three more cobras across the veld in Crammer Road – Malabar’s “cobra street”.
He said his advice to callers was always to try to keep the snake in sight.
“Once it disappears it becomes much more difficult to catch, to determine whether it’s still around or whether it has escaped.”
Cobras were entering the suburbs because their fynbos home were being eroded by development and water and food was becoming more scarce.
While the bit of recent rain has not greatly bolstered the metro’s catchment dams, it has helped to reduce the appearance of puff adders.
“Over the three summer months last year I caught 79, while this year I’ve caught 20,” Marshall said.
“The rain has triggered more plants to seed, which has encouraged more breeding of rodents which provide the puffies with food and keep them in the veld.”
Recently, Marshall was called out by the Algoa Park Animal Hospital to assess a bizarre situation.
“A beggar had found a box on the side of the road and had opened it, obviously hoping to find some food. Instead, he found a boa constrictor and a rat that was eating the snake,” he said.
“He must have got a bit of a surprise but he took the trouble to hand it in to the animal hospital.”
The snake had obviously been kept as a pet but had been discarded, with the rat tossed into the box as food, Marshall said.
“Boa constrictors can’t feed when they get too stressed or cold, so eventually the rat started to eat the snake [which had to be put down].”