Nobody wants to hear their sister scream their name at a decibel reserved for all-out terror at 11h00 on a relentless Monday morning.
“Maaaaaaaaaarth!”
The sound cuts through my closed door like a shot fired. I fly out of my room and up the stairs, asking a series of morbid questions all the way. “Who’s dead? Who’s bleeding? Which nimble tsotsi has high-jumped into the yard and is now holding my family member ransom?”
Within seconds, I’ve burst into my sister’s room and I’m staring at her in alarmed annoyance. “What is it?” I yell, not really wanting to know the answer.
“Did Anika tell you about the snake?” my sister asks me breathlessly as she peers out the window, keeping an eye on it as instructed.
Anika, the lovely domestic worker who cleans our house twice a week, has not told me about the snake.
“She was in the garden putting up the washing!” my sister says. “It was going right for her. I screamed and told her to run!”
Anika ran.
She ran so fast and with such purpose that she hurried to the kettle, made some tea, sat at the dining room table and didn’t tell one of the various souls who call the house home that a snake is loose and living its best life.
As I run to close all the windows and doors, taking in Anika’s calm, solo tea party as I slam things shut and yell for my mum and toddler niece to not, for the love of God, go outside, I’m actually quite astonished.
“Anika, why didn’t you tell anyone about the snake?”
Anika shrugs.
Meanwhile, my sister has phoned a snake catcher, whom she finds by inquiring about reptile invasions in a WhatsApp neighbourhood watch group.
Believe it or not, like the Ghostbusters, there are numbers you can call and one of a selection of snake catchers will rock up at your house and do battle with Satan’s spawn.
Those are my words, not theirs.
The man who arrives to hunt the snake is obviously fascinated by the creatures and is more catch-and-release in his approach than “kill it with fire!”. He zooms in on a motorbike with a storage box on the back and heads out into the garden with a snake hook and a restraining tube.
As Anika, as well as three generations of Mukaiwas (sisters, mother, granddaughter), watch and shriek as is appropriate, the man locates the snake, which has taken cover between a pot plant and the fence, and wrangles it into a restraining tube.
It escapes once (we scream!), it nips at his arm, which is wildly exposed (we scream some more!), and, finally, the apparently harmless sand snake is whisked away.
Though he’s not
really supposed to say it, for fear of folks never stepping outside again, Windhoek is teeming with snakes. And worse ones than our little fella.
To illustrate, the snake catcher whips out his phone and shows us a video of a two-metre-long, thick-as-a-neck python chilling like it pays rent in a living room in Avis.
My sister and I shudder at the thought, thank him for his service and feel thoroughly done with life .
On Snakes of Namibia (Facebook), there’s a list of Windhoek-based snake catchers you can call, should you ever need them.
The volunteer-based group’s mission is “to develop reptile research and conservation in Namibia by raising awareness, collecting data and mitigating human-snake conflict”. Namibia’s peak snake conflict season is between December and May.
Snakes of Namibia also boasts a pretty robust photo directory of snakes encountered across the country with captions like “nice puffadder on the road M51 catching last sun rays”.
Join Snakes of Namibia’s Facebook group and link to this Ethne Engel-king note https://www.facebook.com/legacy/notes/568207693371479/ for countrywide snake catchers, safety tips and relevant first aid.
Avoid these links if you value sleep and prefer not to feel phantom slithering near your feet in bed at night.
– martha@namibian.com.na; Martha Mukaiwa on Twitter and Instagram; marthamukaiwa.com
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