 |
| Eric and Gabby venture into some rock formations in Lesotho |
BEN - As you can tell, Gabby and I are a bit behind in our
journal/blog entries. If one of us
hasn’t taken notes or written about a particular day, it can be difficult to
type about. As such, I honestly have no
idea what we did this day, other than for dinner Gabby and I made burgers and
fries along with butternut squash soup that was delicious. That being said, I will just write about a
particularly funny/absurd occurrence that happened and really shows a regular
interaction that we had with nature and wildlife, which is a consistent theme
of our time in Khotso. Neither Gabby or I am sure when this actually happened,
so this seems as fitting a day as any:
 |
| From Left: Tofalax, Me, Gabby, Jackie |
Gabby was up at the main house (Steve’s house) doing our
laundry. At the time, Steve and Lulu
were not home, but Alistair was hanging out and doing something (most likely
something Steve and Lulu would not approve of) up there as well. I was down in the backpackers, and realized I
needed something from the house. As I
was walking up the driveway, I heard Gabby’s scream and subsequent squeals of
terror. I ran as fast as I could up to
the laundry to find Gabby out in the yard, tears in her eyes. “SNAKE!!” she cried, “there’s a snake in the
laundry.” We are particularly wary of
snakes at Khotso, because the farm houses two of the more venomous types of
snakes in Africa (and thus, the world) the Puff Adder, and the Cape Cobra. We have heard various horror stories from
just about everyone we know on the farm of both types of serpents (the puff
adder is the only snake that can bite backward in a 360 degree turn, the cobra
can spit and blind you, rotting skin, etc.).
With all this in mind, I warily stepped in to the laundry room and
spotted a bright green snake curled in the corner, about 4 feet long. I was almost positive this was not one of the
venomous species, but still armed myself with a laundry basket. By this time Alistair had come to see what
the commotion was about, and stood laughing at the comical scene of Gabby in
near hysterics, and me wielding a laundry basket at what was almost certainly a
harmless tree snake. I eventually was
able to wrangle the snake, scare it out of its corner, and to my relief, out of
the laundry room. However, to my
horror, instead of turning left, out to the lawn and obvious escape route, the
snake turned right and went straight under the small gap between the ground and
Steve’s back door and into the house.
Shit! The snake was 95% under the
doorway, when Alistair suddenly leapt into action and grabbed the snake’s
tail. He struggled with it a second and
eventually yanked the entire snake out from under the doorway. As soon as the head appeared, the snake
whipped around and went for Alistair who immediately chucked the snake backwards. All three of us stared in awe as the snake
sailed through the air, across the lawn, and with unbelievable accuracy landed
in a lone bucket that had been left about 20 feet behind us. SWISH!
We all sat for a minute with our mouths open, dazed at Alistair’s
ridiculous capture of the beast in a bucket farther away than I would have ever
thought possible for one snake to fly.
No comments:
Post a Comment