Durban snake catcher Nick Evans said he had experienced unexpected excitement when he received a call on a rainy Friday from a resident in Reservoir Hills telling him about a black mamba in a storeroom.
Evans said the black mamba, which was about 2.2m long, had been perched on a brush cutter hung up on the wall. The storeroom was quite big and neatly packed, and contained an assortment of items.
“It would have been easier for me if it had just stayed there. But snakes rarely make things easy. It moved behind a pile of items. I focused on the corner the resident saw it move into,” explained Evans.
He said he started moving things off the table, box by box, packet by packet, carefully and slowly, constantly scanning the area, until he eventually uncovered the mamba on a pile of about four boxes in the back corner.
“As expected, it darted down. I had to keep unpacking. It was down to these four boxes,” he said.
Evans added that, after he opened each box with his tongs, he looked inside it before picking it up and moving it. But he was not finding anything.
He said the snake could have sneaked behind a cupboard next to the table, because he could hear the mamba hissing whenever he moved stuff around. Although the hissing was not loud, it was a low-pitched, eerie sound.
Evans explained that he moved the last box with the tongs, and then opened and looked inside it. He said there were a few trays inside the box, but the mamba was nowhere to be seen and was not making any movements.
“I closed it again and picked it up. When I put it down, the box opened – and the mamba suddenly became visible! I had no idea how I missed it, because I had checked it thoroughly.
“The mamba shot out as I stepped back and went into the clutter made by everything I had unpacked. I eventually found it again in another box. I managed to catch it without much fuss,” he said.
Evans will release the snake into a natural habitat soon.
Daily News