It was five-thirty
and time to walk the dogs. Sigh … there are days that I really don’t feel like
hopping on the bike and tearing around the mountain with four psychotic dogs
who chase everything that so much as twitches a whisker.
But oh well.
“It’s time to walk
the dogs, are you coming?” I asked Pio.
“Nope, I’m working
on NamScape.”
Great, I would
have to go alone – but wait, there was Pieter, my cousin from SA that was
visiting.
“Do you want to
come with?” I asked him.
“Ja sure,” he
said, and off we pottered on the bikes up the mountain.
We crested the
first mountain and were sitting on the top waiting for the great galumphing
Kita, way behind us. That dog gets fatter and lazier by the day, and no matter
what you do, she goes at her own pace. Africa Time takes on a whole new meaning
with her.
We just spotted
her coming over the top of the mountain and I was starting to free-wheel down
the first stretch, which is quite steep, when Piet said to me:
“Your dogs have
got something – I can hear them.”
“Shit! Not again.”
Seriously, the poor pigs in this place kakked daily. And then of course there
was the recent seven grand bill from Coda trying to take on a pig and coming
off a sad second best.
I hit the accelerator
on the quad and screamed down the mountain, through the dip, up hill and down
dale as fast as I could. I could now hear them barking. And – bloody Kita –
after taking her sweet-ass time up the mountain she had now beaten me to the
scene of the crime. The fatty could move when she wanted to.
I skidded through
the trees and down into the valley, narrowly missing being impaled on the
bloody overgrown thorn trees that I hadn’t had time to cut back.
I saw what was
happening before I could stop the bike but couldn’t actually process it. It
couldn’t be my dog, it had to be something else. But no – that was Cady’s
striped fur and her long legs sticking out between the coiled rolls of the
biggest python I had ever seen. Somehow, without actually knowing what a python
really looks like, it had to be one.
You hear stories
of them taking dogs but you always think “Ja whatever. It would have to be
seriously big to take a dog.”
Cady was almost
buckled in half and backwards at that. Her tongue was lolling out and her eyes
were black and glazed. It had her so tight in its coils I thought she was
already dead.
I won’t forget
that first sight of it and the following few seconds that it took me to get
around the trees and to stop the bike before I launched off at the snake. What
do you do with something that big? How do you stop it? How do I get it off her?
My baby looked dead and I started screaming for Piet to hurry up and help me.
I tried kicking
it, but it had its mouth over her side and was biting in, coiled around her so
tightly that my kicks did nothing. It was like kicking a rock – pure muscle
coiled tightly and killing my dog. I saw its tail flip up as it rolled and
grabbed it, pulling it backwards as hard as I could to uncoil it.
It actually stopped biting Cady and I saw
it’s jaw yawn wide with hectic teeth.
I got a couple of
coils off but Cady was lifeless and not moving. I screamed for Piet repeatedly,
but this was his first time on a quad in a good few years and he was taking it
slowly, not expecting this at all.
When he got there,
I was still screaming at him to help. He left his bike and ran. As he later put
it, “I regressed to the stone age and used a good old rock to smack it in the
head.”
It took him
throwing numerous rocks at it and me pulling on its tail like a mad thing for
it to eventually give up and drop its prey. I don’t even remember how it
happened, but I do remember Cady lolling on the ground, her eyes glazed and she
was shaking like a leaf.
I tried to hold
her but she had been bent so far over backwards that I was terrified her spine
was broken and she couldn’t walk. I was almost crying in panic. Piet continued
to launch rocks at the python and chase it with a stick, shouting at the other
dogs to get back as they moved closer to see what was going on.
Cady struggled to
her feet and tottered off, sitting under a tree. I have a new respect for this
little bush mongrel that we picked up on the side of the road – she’s as tough
as nails.
The python lay in
the bush, not moving. Piet and I didn’t know what to do – how could we leave it
there? Tomorrow we would be back for another walk and the bastard would
probably still be chilling waiting for the next innocent dog to walk by. Piet
grabbed a long stick and started trying to chase it out the bush.
The python decided
that it was time to head into the trees and it picked itself up on its tail
like it was nothing and curled onto a dead branch. By the time its head was
around the branch, its tail was still on the ground and there was a six foot
gap in-between. The thing was enormous.
When it got itself
up into the tree it lay there and chilled. Piet and I looked at each other –
what to do?
Phone Pio. I now
had to get up the hill as we had no signal in the valley – and go right past
the monster chilling in the tree.
I darted past it
and shot up the hill, waving my phone in the air like a lunatic until I got
signal. I called him.
“There’s a ten
foot python and it almost ate Cady!” I shrieked down the phone.
“Come fetch me,
I’m going to shoot it.”
I darted back down
the hill, past the python, and asked Piet to watch it whilst I went to fetch
Pio. I raced back up the hill on the bike, sliding around corners and spinning
up the mountain.
Pio was already
half way up the hill with the shotgun over his shoulder – nothing harms his
dogs. We turned the bike around on the narrow trail and I jumped on the back,
heading back over the mountain and through the valley.
He almost fell off
the bike when he saw the monster lying on the branch.
“We can’t shoot it
– it’s too beautiful.”
“I did tell you
so,” I muttered. It may have almost killed my dog but I couldn’t shoot
something that big.
“Let’s call the
snake guy.” I darted back up the hill until I found signal again and phoned
Francois Theart, our local snake expert.
“SMS me
directions, I’m on my way,” he said.
Piet and I stayed
in the bush watching the titan of a snake whilst Pio raced home to meet
Francois and his mate.
Francois and Mike
arrived in a stonking great Land Cruiser, taking on the mountain like it was
nothing – however they still had about a kilometer to go on foot before getting
to us down in the bush. We ferried them in on the quads and even they were awed
by the size and condition of this great snake as it stretched it’s 3.5 meter
length across two trees.
Then began the
battle to get it out the trees. We were surrounded by massive thorn trees and
it was virtually impossible to get within reaching distance of the python.
Pio raced back up
to the Land Cruiser to get Mike’s tongs, which on arrival didn’t even fit
around the snakes bulk. He then raced back home again to fetch a saw so that we
could cut away the trees to get to it as the more we tried to catch it the more
it curled up in the thorn trees, ripping its skin. Thorns were imbedded in its
body from the lethal trees, and also in Mike and Francois as they tried to get close
to it.
Piet grabbed the
saw and climbed in with great gusto, sawing branches left, right and center.
Eventually, Mike had the tail in his hands and Francois the head, with a
bleeding thorn tree in the middle.
Needless to say,
there is little left of that tree after Piet gold hold of it.
The python decided
to take a crap on Mike’s hands – apparently it’s a defense mechanism. Mike
almost vomited, swearing like a trooper as he couldn’t let the tail go even if
he’d wanted to.
Francois ID’d the
python as a boy by the length of the tail. He really is very clued up when it
comes to snakes, and explained to us about the heat pits in the nose and how
they build up lactic acid then strike.
His hands were
going numb and cramping as he gripped the snakes head in his hands, whilst it
tried repeatedly to take a piece out of him.
He also told us
that snakes are deaf.
It took a very
long two hours to get the python out of the tree and into the duvet cover they
had brought for it.
Then began the long trek home, with five
people, two quads, a giant snake and Cady, who had stuck to me like glue since
the story began. She had refused to go home with the other dogs on one of Pio’s
many trips up and down the mountain and had stayed by me, quivering in fear
when she went near the spot that she had been grabbed. She has holes where the
snake had bitten into her and was bleeding a little but otherwise seemed fine.
We walked back up
to the Land Cruiser in the pitch black, struggling to carry the snake, shotgun,
backpack, saw, three torches and with Cady sticking so close she literally
tripped me up with every step.
All’s well that
ends well – we got home, tired and filthy and full of holes from the thorn
trees but thankful that our dogs were ok and the snake was safely on its way to
a reserve nearby where it hopefully will live peacefully and never make it back
to my plot!!!
