Ibelo just wanted to share his victory over the three meter snake he killed by the spa. The excitement in his voluntary action was then paraded around the workers area. Seeing a 12 foot spitting black cobra with blood trickling down the sides of his body is no more enjoyable than seeing it slithering along the side of the spa window where he was once found. Snakes are terrifying. With more than 10 species that are abundant here on the reserve it can be often as every other day where people talk about a puff ader or water python that they saw slithering its way back maybe into hibernation. The weather across the global is playing tricks on every living organism. Mild winter days lure out the snakes making them hope for a change in body temp, before the nights frost glistens back over Kedar.
Animals are continuing to have little ones, the Waterbok have a couple of new borns hiding in the wetland pass the dam. The Kudu sit outside a fence where one of the females tends to her young and her own health. The oddness in the timing of the year for these new borns is unusual, spring isn’t arriving any time soon and these little ones must endure cold sometimes freezing nights.
Wild fires. Luckily control burns thwart the power and destruction of wild fires. During these winter months the land becomes dry and arid, fire can be started from a cigarette bud, a lightening bolt, or the most common; the all powerful sun. The fire does more healing than damage once its over, but missed used in control burning leads to many new and up coming tree shoots being burnt. Creating a progression of a mountain side that will never have the chance to grow into a resilience.
It is odd when you drive for an hour or two through the reserve and to the corners, in search of but to no sight of the five Giraffes. They can only sleep for 5 minutes at a time and can not keep their head down for more than that five. Their bodies are camouflaged well by the tall savanna grasses and thick Acacia trees. It has happened more than once and for about a period of 4 days I thought they went missing.
The south west corner of the reserve is charred and black from a control burn that we did a week ago. New green shoots are springing to life only to be feed on by the Blessbok and Zebra that roll around in the charcoaled aftermath of a blazed grassland.
How many if any snakes were burnt that day?