Mamba causes panic
RANDBURG HOME: POSSIBLE STOWAWAY IN LIMPOPO VISITORS’ CAR
These venomous snakes are rarely seen in Gauteng, according to snake handler.
ACenturion resident’s visitors from Limpopo may have inadvertently left an unwelcome stowaway at their host’s home this week. The resident of Mnandi got a nasty surprise when a 2.78m-long black mamba was found in her yard on Tuesday.
The snake, which was entangled in an electric fence, was discovered by a gardener.
Black mambas are venomous, endemic to parts of sub-Saharan Africa.
They are quite rare in Gauteng, according to Dawie van Eeden, a snake handler from African Reptiles and Venom, who was dispatched to remove the snake from the property.
“The venomous snakes usually found in Gauteng are rinkhals, snouted cobras, Mozambique spitting cobras and puff adders,” he said. He suspected the snake might have come from Limpopo, as the woman had visitors from the province over the weekend.
The mamba was taken to African Reptiles and Venom, a company owned by Mike Perry, which is home to about 500 snakes.
The snakes are used to supply venom to South African Vaccine Producers in Johannesburg to manufacture antivenom.
This is the second reported black mamba sighting in Gauteng in recent months.
A black mamba recently killed a Randburg family’s pet kitten in February.
Meanwhile, residents of Freedom Park informal settlement in Boksburg claim that sightings of venomous snakes have become an almost daily occurrence, attributing this to the long grass in the area.
A school in Soshanguve, Pretoria, had similar complaints, prompting the department of education to summon snake-handlers from the local zoo to help catch the snakes people claimed were terrorising pupils.
Venomous snakes haven’t only been a terror to Gauteng residents lately, though.
Well-known KwaZulu-Natal snake handler Sarel van der Merwe has been remarkably busy since the beginning of the year, sometimes being called out to several black mamba sightings in a single day.
Van der Merwe caught a 4.1m black mamba in Murchison in February. He said plenty of snakes were out and about, not only due to the hot weather, which is now on the wane, but also because they go into hibernation soon. – Citizen reporter and Caxton News Service