It is getting colder every day, I never thought that Africa especially Southern African countries could get cold enough that frost gathers on tall grasses and mountain trees.
Yesterday I got a call in the morning asking me to remove a python from behind the bar. The excitement was so much that I almost forgot to put on shoes, thinking that sandals would be just good enough to tackle a snake with. When I had arrived at the scene a group of fifteen workers stood idly laughing, gasping, and screaming as the snake coiled itself around an electric box.
The python was about 4 feet long and two n’ half inches thick, a young one that simply felt comfortably warm by wrapping his or her body around the white electrical box. I had found a dried out piece of bamboo, cut the branch of a silver clusterleaf tree so the end of it resembled a wish bone, I then stuck that piece in the hollow bamboo shoot and had made myself a snake catching staff. I knocked it off the box and pinned down the head between the v shaped branch. In its cunning way it avoided the stick the first a couple of times and continued to strick at me until I got it pinned once more. Stepping lightly over the back of its head I then started to twirl the stick near the mid section. The adolescent python coiled itself around the stick which made it easier for me to lift it up to place it in the pillow case I brought with me.
I have never had a fear of snakes but when I empty the contents of my pillow case I felt more uneasy then when I had captured it. I drove down to the dam thinking that the tall grass and water would provide the snake with a good habitat. I watched it slither away hoping that it would look back at me one last time.