If you happen to have a wife that owns a house snake which you find lying around relaxed in a flower pot and of which you know that it doesnt really care at all for you as long as you dont accidentally step on it, you may understand my amusement when I tried to take a photo of it with the iPad, and right the moment it saw the Apple symbol
Give it a kiss from me 
.
An apple I would consider. Although: Without pelt and non-squeaking I’m sure he wouldnt mind.
Dear Ulrich Bogun,
I invite you to work for one week on our fields after Molepolole together with our workers. Lets say between september and March to make sure the snakes are not in hybernation.
You will work for 12 hours a day in temperatures between 40 and 45 °C. You will get nice safety protection against the snakes.
We have the Black Mamba, the Puff Viper and the Spitting Cobra. All three very venomous. Keep in mind that the time needed to reach the road from our field is 20 minutes. From the point we reach the road until the Livingstone hospital is another 30 minutes at least. From the moment you get bitten, you have 30 minutes, 40 minutes maximum to receive the anti venom.
So whatever snake bites you on our field, you surely die. Our workers work every day among these creatures. They have protection against snakes, however working with that kind of protection in temperatures between 40 and 45°C is almost impossible and sheer torture.
Last december I invited a german tourist with a big mouth to come with us to our fields and experience the danger himself. He refused.
I like to see your self-discipline when standing still, not even move your eyes with a hissing Black Mamba in front of you, raised on the same height as your face. One movement and you get bitten aggresively many times. Each bite is enough to kill several adults.
Also don’t think you have a good view of the desert floor. Most of the floor is covered by high grass or crops.
I had several encounters with the Black Mamba and the Spitting Cobra myself. Believe me, it takes a lot of self control to survive those encounters.
For your information, we leave the snakes alone on our field. It is their territory which we invaded. Our workers, work in other sections if a snake is in their way. When it is gone, they continue work.
Snakes are our secondary workforce, killing mouse and other animals which otherwise eat our crops.
Snakes need to be in the wild, not in a cage for the display of Whites and how daring they are.
Keep in mind that this forum is a multi-cultural place. What seems harmless to one, can be interpreted as highly offensive by others. You and others can laugh with this, however I am afraid of the moment there is a snake accident with one of our workers.
The bite of a Black Mamba is called “kiss of death”. Says enough not?
Chris
Chris where are you?
In Taiwan, pretty much every snake will kill you. Most are non aggressive, although farmers do have to dress up (even in the heat), just in case. There is one called the “100 pacer”, which I poked at with a stick to persuade it to move off a path. My camera received a strike from a blue keel snake a couple of years ago as I was trying to photograph it, it got obviously got bored. My car has been attacked by a black cobra (I startled it as I came round the corner).
There was a time when I went to investigate what the dog had found, as I parted the grass, I heard a hiss… Back off slowly… I never did see what snake it was.
My friend has lost two dogs to snake bites in the last year; makes me nervous when my two encounter a snake. One dog knows to avoid it, while the other is too curious and wants to know if it wants to play.
Now what scares me and the giant huntsman and orb weaver spiders here, easily bigger than your hand. The huntsman run really fast and the orb weavers build webs that span roads. Errrghh…
Our fields are behind Molepolole in the south part of Botswana (Africa). Our house is in Gaborone (Broadhurst, near the brewery at Mandela Road).
Myself, I am not always in Botswana, I travel two times a year between Belgium and Botswana. My wife is a very traditional motswana living in Botswana.
It is nice to see all those animals from a distance in the wild. However like you experienced yourself, you only see them when you almost too close. Our workers wear the protection as long as my wife or I am on the field. When we are out of sight, they get it off. That behaviour is seriously forbidden, but what can we do? They have to cover their face with a transparant plastic shield because Mamba bites are mostly in the face.
Everything has to be treated as dangerous. When bitten, it is important to see what bites you.
It is beautiful on our field because a big part is bush with open spaces in between. Beautiful but deadly for unaware people.
Thank you very much for sharing your experiences from Taiwan. I read it with very much interest.
Chris
Guys, you are really scaring me. Here in good old Europe I think I have seen blindworm once. That one is tiny and harmless.
I do not even know what wild animals there can live in France (even if I saw a fawn [faon in french]) while in a train from Strasbourg to Paris years ago
On the other hand, we got plenty tv shows about wilds (usually in Africa)
;-
the only wild animal we see in London is probably foxes.
In the south west France woods when I was a kid, I encountered vipers several times. They can be deadly, that is why we wore tall rubber boots.
Chris,
I was calculating accusations of blasphemy, but being raised on a Christian school I was sure I could cope with. I surely didnt want to stomp on your feet and admit that to you kinds of these species are a real threat to your life. Although I envy you and Sam for your natures surroundings, they certainly come with a price I am not sure Id be willing to pay.
About the guy I sent his picture: Thats a nonpoisonous corn snake. He wouldnt live anymore if my wife hadnt adopted him because he was born here at a friend of hers who could not find enough “parents”. There are certainly a lot of valuable viewpoints about holding animals in general, but I believe that there is no general right or wrong in complex structures, rather a need for balancing them.
Absolutely no offense intended, but if one were to consider each viewpoint that could be touched negatively our communication level here wouldnt be the one it is. In an exaggeration: The Siegfried & Roy accident shouldnt stop people from posting cat pictures.
I regret that seeing the picture has brought up memories of extreme danger in your life, or that you got the idea I wanted to make fun about that situation. This was not my intention. To me this guy is a kitty cat, not a lion, and I do not possess memories containing dangerous snakes. A similar situation could appear with a picture of a sports car to someone who was run over by one. Therefore thanks a lot for sharing your viewpoint, and sincerely deepest respect to all of you who take this risk each day. You will understand that I wont accept your kind invitation, but if we should ever meet I absolutely owe you a beer!
Gosh! I’m terrified of snakes. Thankfully we don’t get many but I did see what looked like a green mamba once on the steps in the garden, and a long fat light brown snake my mate told me was harmless. My one cat occasionally catches baby snakes and brings them in to the bathroom to play with them - then I have to ( carefully! ) drop a towel over them and dump them outside. But they move very fast.
There is a mongoose living nearby that I have seen a few times in the early morning light on the road. Very pretty looking creature with a very long bushy tail.
Then the monkeys - lots of troops about. Thank heaven my old Collie barks them away, as, once they figure they can get in to the kitchen, they are serious pests. Locals get quite cruel chasing them away - paintball guns, pellet guns. They are not clever road-crossers and I would really hate to run one over going home from work - had to brake hard yesterday to avoid one.
In the place where I live now (Germany) and in my home country (Italy) I’ve seen a lot of potentially dangerous animals (vipers, boars, wolves, bears to say some).
However, in both places, the most deadly animals I’ve ever encountered are humans.
Glad that you posted no image from that species. Too terrible…
[quote=259434:@Sam Rowlands]Chris where are you?
In Taiwan, pretty much every snake will kill you. Most are non aggressive, although farmers do have to dress up (even in the heat), just in case. There is one called the “100 pacer”, which I poked at with a stick to persuade it to move off a path. My camera received a strike from a blue keel snake a couple of years ago as I was trying to photograph it, it got obviously got bored. My car has been attacked by a black cobra (I startled it as I came round the corner).
There was a time when I went to investigate what the dog had found, as I parted the grass, I heard a hiss… Back off slowly… I never did see what snake it was.
My friend has lost two dogs to snake bites in the last year; makes me nervous when my two encounter a snake. One dog knows to avoid it, while the other is too curious and wants to know if it wants to play.
Now what scares me and the giant huntsman and orb weaver spiders here, easily bigger than your hand. The huntsman run really fast and the orb weavers build webs that span roads. Errrghh…[/quote]
Ucgh. In norway you have these two types of snakes that grow to be like 30-40 cm long, so they are tiny, yet I get the creeps when I walk in the woods and almost step on these. I am more scared of it than they are of me. If I am ever in Taiwan, I will hire you @Sam Rowlands as my snake guard and especially spider hunter I guess there are plusses of living in a cold country
Closest I’ve come to Python trouble is getting my versions mixed up …
Snakes are actually quite cool. I’d never touched one until a few years ago. My brother has many and is quite an expert in them. He says that the reason people are scared of them is because they don’t understand them. He teaches kids at schools about snakes. His first rule is always that if you see one in the wild, don’t touch it. Leave it alone. Most people don’t know the difference between a poisonous and non-poisonous snake.
So after his lecture he allowed people to hold several of his Boa’s or Pythons. One young girl had one wrapped around her arm. I thought, “Dang it! If she can do this, so can I.” By the end of the night, I had both his python and boa wrapped around me. It’s actually a really, really cool sensation - like you are getting a giant hug. Snakes are pretty much all muscle. Not at all slimy. Quite cool.
Now, to Chris’ point - wow! What a place. But also, to your comments - please - let’s not get over offended by other people’s choices and decisions. You may not want to have pets and you may think it’s horrible that my brother has snakes as pets, but a truly tolerant world and society lets people of all viewpoints co-exist. Here in the USA today, those that scream loudest for tolerance are actually the most intolerant of the lot…Everyone is too offended by everything. We all have different experiences and viewpoints. Neither invalidates the other.
Hello Ulrich,
Thank you very much for your interesting explanation.
In the situation you describe, I can only be happy that you and your wife rescued that corn snake. I live by the saying : live and let live.
Thank you very much for your apology but it was not necessary. Even in your first posting, you did not wrote anything which was offensive in a direct way. I am concerned about the safety of our workers and from that point, wrote an emotional reaction.
You are welcome at our fields but I understand and respect your decision. Nevertheless when we take people with us to the field, we do not take any risk. Safety first! We always watch out for them, warn them of the dangers and guide them safely. After a while, it is easy to recognise those paths, snakes take regularly. Like we do, they want to avoid the accasia because it has very sharp torns. Where they go, you can see it on the grass. When you follow their paths, you can be sure you are not harmed by the accasia. However the snake can still be on the trail or sunbading in the neighbourhood of the trail. We placed rocks where they can sunbade, without harming us. It is their territory, nobody is allowed to go near that place. They warm up their bodies on those rocks. After we placed them there, we never even came close to it.
By placing those rocks, it is a way to attrack those snakes because they eat the rodents and mice on our field. With enough precautions, snake and human kind can safely work together. Snake bites are accidents, when someone comes too close or stand on them. They just defend themselves, nothing more, nothing less. They also cannot be tamed.
A mamba has a very sharp sight in contrast with other snakes. They are intelligent and they can take a close look of you. They are hissing loudly, so on that moment you know to keep completely still. They get a normal speed of 11 km/hour but when hunting or attacking , they can easily reach 20 km an hour. So you know, it is useless to outrun them, they will catch up easily.
However the mamba is not aggressive. She will run when she see or feel you coming. Only when she is feel treatened then she can raise herself to 1/3 of her total body length and shows the black interior of her mouth. When doing that you can easily see her fangs. Believe me, the look itself is enough to be scared. She can even touch or climb your body, in all cases you have to stand perfectly still. I never experienced this myself.
I respect the black mamba but are not afraid of it. I know when you follow her rules (standing still and not treatening her), she will not attack. But the puff viper is a different case. Those snakes are only 1 m long but very tick. Because they are so slow, they are very aggressive. What keeps them even more dangerous, it is dificult to see them, even in the sand because their body camouflage them. A bite is deadly because their is no anti venom and you get internal bleedings every where. Once the poison reach your heart, you are done. Nevertheless, there are people who survived their attacks, but they have all one thing in common : they where nearby a hospital. The puff viper is very ugly and their hiss is very aggressive. When you hear them, it is too late because they strike immediatelly.
There are other snakes on our field too, however I do not recognise them. One of our workers saw a completely black snake. I have no idea what snake that was.
Like you, I respect our workers and the people who have to live with those snakes very much. At the end of the year, I gonna follow a course how to catch such dangerous snakes and place them elsewhere on our field. Like I said, live and let live.
Ulrich, you are a very friendly and helpfull man. A true gentleman in my opinion. Even when I do not agree with an opinion, I will respect that different opinion. And in case we meet, I am willing to buy you a drink, even more than one. I really do regret that my emotional reaction sounded so harsh to you. It was not my intention. Anyway you are welcome.
Wish you a very nice day and thankfull for all the help and support you provide on this forum. You surely make a difference
@Jon Ogden,
You are correct, we have to respect each others viewpoints, even when we do not agree with them. Like I wrote above, my reaction was emotional out of concern. Your brother does a very good job in educating people about snakes. You are correct, misunderstandings between snake and humans lead to accidents and pre-justices. It is a very wise advise to touch never a snake in the wild, because you never know. In fact, they can be very beautiful. Thank you for your comments.
Chris
I have had the opportunity to spend time in Central America where along the coast were coral snakes with the triple canopy jungle teaming with vipers, pythons, howler monkeys and coatimundi. The rivers, well lets just say you better know where you are before you step in and when you are in get ready for anything. I mean if a river is 40 ft wide it is almost immediately 40 ft deep. If you are close to the ocean there will be sharks in there as well. We trudged it all and it was the best thing I could have done at that ripe old age of 19. Spent a year and half in Central America mainly Panama. @Massimo Valle In my time there it was also my observation that humans are the most deadliest animals. Such as you are told not to step on anything on a trail, just the trail. Some newbie in the back who thought he knew it all stepped on a log and it turned out to be a python. He freaks when it moves and he starts hitting it with his M-16. We have to knock the guy down to stop the stupidity. Then another time we were camped out and a few guys decided they wanted fresh meat. Well the howlers were migrating and they decided to have that for meat. They shot a couple and had dinner. Some of us prepared hammocks a long way away from them. Later that night the troop came back, bit, pissed and crapped on them. Only those who ate the meat got attacked. We medivaced them out of triple canopy jungle. Some of you on this thread must know how much light there is at night with no m,ion in triple canopy jungle - none. Got starred down a few times by vipers as I trapping through the woods (it was triple canopy jungle but we called i the woods). Each time I was lucky as they were all tree vipers and they were short coiled. Lastly I needed to check into the base hospital for checkup after a month in the woods. So I road my motorcycle to enjoy some air conditioning. When we arrived we saw some locals throwing mangos at something near the base of a huge mango tree. Every once in a while you saw something pop up and disappear. We walled over, it looked like a fer de lance but had green instead of brown so not really sure what it was. Anyway as I walked I yelled parada hack atrs ‘stop and back away’. We just came out of the woods after the python incident and coatimundis ran us off the trail so what the hey. As we slowly approached and all the locals got in back of us it reared its head but only a few inches off the ground. I grabbed the step of my helmet letting it droop down and placed it in front of me with the buckle end dangling about head high to the snake. It caught a look at the strap and kept starring as I slowly moved forward. About 3 ft away it darted and bit the strap. I know what I was doing and was expecting all this but I am telling you it is still freaky. As mentioned earlier it takes a lot not to get spooked. Well I suggested my helmet against its head, grabbed its body in back of the helmet, dropped the helmet and used my other hand to grab a bit further down its body. My buddy Michael grabbed my helmet and we walked over to the edge of of the woods and tossed the sake in and it took off.
Back home in NY nothing like it at all.
So yes it is respect to all creatures I have. I was maybe gifted with that as I was raised on an old time farm. No mass chemicals, natural feed and the knowledge that some of them that were no longer here kept us alive.
What a discussion from such a diverse group. Do I feel wisdom creeping in slowly. Nothing but the best to everyone on this thread
Human are the only animal that I know of, which will attack for no logical reason, unless the animal is sick or been attacked by humans.
Pretty much my view also, but not just in the U.S. In most western countries.