Durban snake catcher Nick Evans said rescuing a 2.3 black mamba from a home in Chatsworth was not an easy feat. 

“If it had bolted off, it could have ended up in the neighbour’s yard,” Evans shared the rescue journey on his Facebook page. 

The mamba was caught hiding in a narrow gap between a brick wall and a corrugated iron room. 

Evans said he and his partner Carla had to navigate a cluttered storeroom to reach the snake.

“Carla had to climb over stacked boards and clutter to get to where it was curled up. Not the most ideal terrain to be standing on when trying to catch a mamba, but that’s the environment we work in,” he explained.

The pair were able to extract the snake carefully.

“Carla managed to grab a coil with her tongs, and an end of the mamba was coming out, we just didn’t know if it was the venom end or the poo end! It was the head end. Fortunately, I was there to help get tongs on the body, and together we worked at pulling it out gently from its hiding spot,” Evans said.

The mamba measured 2.3 metres, though Evans estimated it had previously been 2.5–2.6 metres before losing part of its tail.

“It was a male with an immense load on board, filled with rat hair, showing what a good pest controller mambas are,” Evans added.

The Black Mamba has since been safely released far from homes. 

In a separate incident in KwaZulu-Natal, a 1.8-metre Black Mamba was removed from a power box at King Shaka International Airport (KSIA) on Tuesday morning.

Reaction Unit South Africa (RUSA) was called to a vacant plot at the airport after an employee of a private company noticed the snake while checking the electricity.

Reaction Officers Nathi Ndaba and Sizwe Mthethwa safely removed and relocated the reptile.

IOL News

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