Things that slither

It’s as I am reaching for the chives that I detect, out of the corner of my eye, a slight movement on the fence of the vegetable garden – a snake, a long, very thin, green thing with black markings. I lurch backwards and the terrified creature slithers in the opposite direction. It twirls itself onto the gate, and I am trapped.

Wild garlic, a smelly but pretty snake repellent

I can see my mother – the granny in the granny flat – and I wave my arms frantically. This is a terrible mistake: my ridiculous fear of snakes is all her fault. “I don’t like that,” she says. “It could grow into something very ugly.”

The little thing lifts its head. “No, it’s not a boomslang (well, I really hope so), and even if it was, it couldn’t do anything to us,” I say. “It’s quite pretty.” I cannot believe I’ve just said that – shows you how far I’ve come.

A boomslang is poisonous, but its fangs are so far back in its mouth that you would literally have to force your little finger almost down its throat if you really want to be bitten. But still …

We yell for grown-up boy-child (so glad he is home), who finds a long pole for the snake to slither onto. “Take it far away,” I say.

“Umm … I’m running out of time,” he says. The snake is indeed now half-way up the stick. He manages to get it to the boundary fence. It winds itself on the latte and hurries away.

‘Super pet’

It turns out that this is a bush snake, which a blogger called Libby says “makes a super pet for any young boy … They become extremely tame and will recognize you immediately and slither to the glass to ‘talk’ to you”. This snake is not poisonous.  

Amazingly, this is the first snake that we have seen here since our house-warming party last April when a snake (someone identified it as a red-lipped herald), lazing in a potted tree, made its presence known to our guests. That caused quite a flurry.

We’ve had some close encounters. The most scary was when my two cats flushed out a puffadder, close to two metres long and with very yellow markings (apparently, this is a sign that it is old), from behind an old hibiscus and herded it into the bush. Puffadders are the worst: they are highly venomous and lazy, too, which means that they won’t always get out of your way. Fortunately, we don’t get the mamba so far south, although we have seen them in the Transkei and in our garden in Durban.

Sharing

I’ve had to accept that I share this space with all kinds of wildlife, including snakes. In fact, I am in their territory. That, and the dawning understanding that snakes are really terrified of humans and will get out of our way, has helped deal with some of my unreasonable fear.

But I still don’t like them, and I’m always on a mission to find ways to keep them away. It’s said that cats keep snakes away, and that does seem to be the case. Phew! 

Also, there are apparently some plants that repel snakes. Wild garlic (Tulbaghia) is one of these, so naturally, I have planted clumps everywhere. These plants, indigenous to big chunks of South Africa, do have a strong smell (which is probably what the snakes don’t like), but their purple flowers are really pretty. Allegedly snakes don’t like pelargoniums and geranium, also indigenous, so these, too, are planted all over the place.