Durban snake catcher Nick Evans said that his rescue of a black mamba last week turned out to be one of his quickest ceiling captures.
Evans was called out to Moseley by a homeowner last week after she heard movement above her, in her ceiling. When she looked up, she saw the body of a black mamba through a small gap in the ceiling.
“What a sight!” Evans exclaimed.
“I went up into the ceiling and could hear the mamba moving around in the plastic below the roof tiles.”
Evans said that this usually,can be a tricky situation and one either needed to cut holes in the plastic or get on the roof and remove tiles.
“Fortunately, this turned out to be one of my quickest ceiling captures,” Evans said.
“The mamba moved across a hole in the plastic, allowing me to reach in with my 1.8m African Snakebite Institute tongs, grab it, pull it out, and secure it with my usual, metre-long tongs. I couldn't believe my luck!
“Climbing over the beams, with the 2.5m mamba in my hands, back towards the trapdoor where the owner climbed up to pass me my bucket, was the hardest part,” Evans said.
He said that he found old, disintegrated shed skin, indicating it had been residing, undetected in the ceiling for some time.
Evans also thanked the homeowner for calling.
When Evans rescued four black mambas in one day in March, one of the snakes was removed from a ceiling in Malvern.
Evans said the snake was tricky.
He said that the homeowner had seen it in the garage. “But, to make my life difficult, it moved up into the ceiling.
“Of course, it did, on a sweltering hot day and, I had to climb from one end of the roof to the other to get where it had gone into. They know how to make life inconvenient.” Evans said.
“I climbed across, sweating in the sauna-like roof. As I neared the end, by the wall, I spotted the mamba, curled up.
“I'm not sure if it was my JETBeam South Africa headlamp blinding it or if it was just confused, but it didn't move. It just watched me approach, and finally, let me grab it. Probably the easiest roof capture I've had,” Evans said.
He said it was a young snake, about 1.5m±.
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