Great and Unbelievable Traits Of The Snake, Scorpion and Spider

Snake in the Thatch

Take a snake, a scorpion and a spider. Add a mouse, a frog and a lizard. It sounds like an exotic bush recipe for a Chinese dish. Or like a riddle about who devours whom. It is none of the two. The focus in this chapter is on the common traits of scary creatures like these.

At least one thing they have in common – the ability to surprise, unsettle, shock or irritate. Size is not the criterion. Often, the smallest of them is the most dangerous. Beware of all kinds of small things which crawl, wriggle, clamber or slither. Whether they bite, sting, peck, nibble or gnaw, be alert. Some, like frogs, afflict in more subtle ways. They bombard one’s ear-drums with their clamorous frog indabas.

I have an inborn aversion to the three most dangerous s’s: snake, scorpion and spider. Soon after we moved in, I became very much aware of their presence in Sabiepark. This introduction to life in the wild did nothing to alleviate my fear.

A hairy spiders appeared from nowhere

The first evening when I climbed into the bath, two scary, hairy spiders appeared from nowhere to monitor the proceedings. With their long legs – are there really only eight, not perhaps twelve? – they scrambled at eye-level, back and forth along the wall. I am convinced that their motive was to intimidate the defenceless pale body in the water.

A barefoot-visit to the kitchen a few nights later almost ended in disaster. It was a stupid and reckless move, and I just missed treading on a scorpion at the door of the gas fridge. Its tail formed a threatening arch, and it’s poisonous sting was ready to strike. Tokkie’s torch saved my bacon. Fortunately I had called her to show me where she kept the cheese. Golden rule: don’t go barefoot in the dark.

Then Craig Hay, a previous deputy-manager of the park, shot a mamba of just short of 2,5 metres in the roof of Tony Zimolong’s house. This specimen was frozen and exhibited at the annual general meeting – a creepy reminder of what may be hiding in your own roof. Golden rule number two: never become over-confident; danger usually looms where it is least expected.

The darkest days the Van Deventers ever had in their eight years in Sabiepark

One of the darkest days the Van Deventers ever had in their eight years in Sabiepark could, however, not be blamed on a snake, scorpion or spider. The sorry affair started when the usually reliable family car refused to start. Now what? Along the road to Hazyview I once saw, among many not so professional commercial signs, a tin sign against a tree, advertising the service of a “michenic”. With great difficulty I located the sign and then the advertiser. I begged him to come to Sabiepark and find the fault. He eventually arrived. He jerked here and pushed there, while muttering all possible remedies. Eventually he announced: “Yo-yo-yo, big troubles.” He added: “And I got no tools for this job.” He suggested I should take the car to Nelspruit – more than 100 kilometres away.

A flat-bed emergency vehicle was summoned. My maroon Mercedes Sportline was hoisted on a trailer and made an undignified exit on the way to Hazyview for an initial diagnosis. When the AA truck slowly disappeared among the trees, “Ouma Marietjie” watched with dismay. I also felt like shedding a tear. To be stranded in the wilds without a car – for how long? – was a sombre prospect.

Two days later my cellphone rang. I could fetch my car at Hazyview. And the fault? Nothing serious. Only mice that made a nest in the engine. They had gnawed through the wires leading to the distributor. “I suppose they love black spaghetti,” laughed the garage owner. I must admit: I felt like a monkey.

Mice! Which kind? I don’t know. I’ve heard that something like 50 kinds of these unpleasant mammals have been documented. Their babies come like weeds. Every few months a new batch sees the light.

On the way home, the mouse incident acquired a nasty tail. A truck ahead of me kicked up a stone. The flying missile punched a hole in the front bumper and reduced a new Pirrelli tyre to a heap of rubber. It had become quite an expensive exercise. But, with time comes wisdom. From then onwards a little dish of Racumen, an environment-friendly poison, is placed beneath my vehicle every night, unless I forget, which unfortunately does sometimes happen.

For such forgetfulness a price has to be paid. Less than 15 months later, the field mice again invaded the space under my bonnet. This time it was my brand-new Honda CR-V which fell victim to the pests. Fortunately, the damage was less severe this time.

The Honda could still run. But when the mechanics at Menlyn McCarthy’s in Pretoria lifted the bonnet, they could not believe their eyes. Everyone had to come and have a look. Everywhere holes were chewed in tubes. I was feeling like a monkey again, because I was so thoroughly fed-up about what I thought was a bad connection causing a leaking water tank – and I didn’t keep my ire secret. “How the devil do you think I must reach Cape Town if I cannot even clean the windscreen?” Poor show, Van Deventer!

The mouse story

I poured out my sorrows to Fickie and André Visagie. From them, I heard another disturbing mouse story – of an expecting mouse mother who made a nest in a drawer in their kitchen, one filled with tablecloths. Every cloth was made into fluff – in preparation of a comfortable nursery. After the confinement, the mother gnawed an escape route through the drawer and disappeared with her brood.

Fickie also knows a quota of alarming snake stories. One of the snakes he had to evict from his home was, if my memory serves me right, a Mozambique spitting cobra. This export from the land of Graça Machel-Mandela is almost as venomous as a mamba. It has a reputation of being able to spit extremely accurately into your eye for a distance of up to two metres. The “good news” is that spitting cobras are not “overly aggressive”, provided they are not disturbed – note well!

A sideboard, a made-up bed, a shower cubicle and the padded headboard of a bed have, I believe, been used in Sabiepark by various adders for their winter hibernation, or for shedding their skin. At Tarlehoet, Tokkie discovered a discarded transparent snake skin of an unknown species in a dark corner of a loft, above a bed which we keep in readiness for unexpected guests.

Venomous snakes are rather commonly encountered from time to time. The victims are usually man or beast. However, snakes also tackle other snakes. On Tokkie’s birthday, 15 March 2005, we saw at the picnic spot a ring-necked cobra give a tiger snake the fright of his life. The threatened “tiger” had probably never moved as fast as it did that afternoon. As a famous Afrikaans radio personality always put it, the snake moved “that the dust so stand” – “dat die stof so staan”, in his language.More about snakes and spiders