Snakes Collection 20 June

As part of my war against the fascist Facebook part of my tactical withdrawal is moving all the things I use to post on that platform elsewhere.

Python Wrestling

I have mentioned that I have a lifelong fascination with — no, not just women — snakes as well. Apart from the Anaconda I had a huge Burmese python. One day I was too lazy to remove the python from the box before cleaning up a mess that it had made. These pythons eat a huge amount and even when just fed will always go for more prey. The normally docile animal saw me as its next meal. It struck, taking my whole right hand in its mouth, which has no fangs but four, yes, four rows of needle-sharp hooked teeth, each a few millimetres long. At the same time, with incredible speed, it threw a couple of coils around me, effectively trapping my right arm and leg against my body. The power of this animal is enormous. With my left hand and leg free I hopped to the couch and fell in a sort-of sitting position. The python squeezed and bit down even harder. I could hear the teeth squeaking along the bones in my fingers. I have pretty strong hands; I can squeeze with a pressure of more than double my body weight: about 130kg or so, so I thought I would just strangle the mother. I tried this but all it did was squeeze me harder.
My ribs were beginning to creak now, and I could not breathe very well. Shit. I always wore my gun for a left-hand draw, reason being, your right hand is normally busy with something, so the left is free. I shoot the same with either hand. I tried to think this through but the pain was making thinking a bit hard. If I shot the python’s head, my hand was inside it, so that was not a good plan. I still had my left limbs relatively free, but the snake had now pulled me in towards myself and my right thigh was almost on my chest.
I eventually came up with a plan. I hopped to the bathroom and got a bucket. This was quite a distance: my house was huge. The snake was doing the constriction thing all the way and by now I could barely breathe. I filled the bucket, all left hand drive, with water. I then toppled into the empty bath with the snake’s head, and my right hand, in the bucket. Pythons can hold their breath almost as long as a bloody crocodile so I was prepared to wait a while.
Fortunately, she let go quickly. As she did I grabbed her head with my left hand; my right hand was spray-painting the bathroom with blood. About 90 teeth had punctured all the small veins in my hand and fingers. If I had tried to rip her off I would have done irreparable damage to the hand. The hooked teeth would have cut all the tendons. It was not too bad, a lot of tiny holes is all. I threw her back in the box and went outside for a smoke. Evonne came round with a friend and found me sitting in the garden, smoking and dripping blood. I cleaned up my hand and then the bathroom. When I say spray-painted I mean spray-painted, there was even blood on the fucking ceiling. Evonne made coffee while I did this. She had come to look at a cage I had for her in the back garden. As I lifted the cage, a nest of wasps was disturbed and I got stung on the neck and the face.
Some days one should just stay in bed. I got rid of that python shortly after; once a wild animal has seen you as food, well … it is not a happy situation.

Taken from The Chronicles of the Mexican Horse Thief II

Reptiles and Amphibians 28 January 2012

Brown House Snake – Photos

In the past couple of years I have not come across a large House Snake only baby ones. You can see by the way I hold it that they are harmless, very good at keeping the mice and rat population down. Unfortunately snakes are not cute, and people tend to kill any and all they find.

Scorpions – Photos

Scorpions are predatory arachnids of the order Scorpiones. They have eight legs and are easily recognized by the pair of grasping pedipalps and the narrow, segmented tail, often carried in a characteristic forward curve over the back, ending with a venomous stinger.

From Wiki

Apart from snakes, scorpions have also been  of great interest to me. So a lot of combined snake and scorpion catching missions were made by me. You can see this in the cover of my book, The Chronicles of the Mexican Horse Thief,  that I designed and drew.

Here are a few photos of real scorpions for your perusal.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Snakes from Above

12 hours after getting cobra venom in the eye

I was working and living at Badplaas Mechanical Services, the workshop was about 4km from that sorry excuse of a town. Nice view of the mountain and grasslands all around me, I was content. My room was powered from a couple of batteries and an inverter, as Eskom was broken.

Rigged above my bed was an LED light, because I do love to read at night. The building was not in a good state of repair and between the wall and the ceiling were large gaps, this did not bother me much, until one night.

I was sitting on my bed playing a computer game, very focused on it. Something brushed against my shoulder, thinking it was one of the huge moths they have there I absently slapped it away. Instant pain in my left eye! Caught only a glimpse of the Mozambique Spitting Cobra, I had just slapped, slithering under the bed.  The pain was intense; I stumbled to the bathroom and washed out my eyes………

Read more: HOME PAGE

 

Nosce te ipsum

View the Mexican Horse Thief’s Page

Short Story

THE MEXICAN HORSE THIEF I – ANGOLA

Of Dangerous Things

RPGs, Snakes and Scorpions.

One day in Mozambique

The driver and I drive the bakkies about 15km to the spot we must meet the motor bikes. It is by a kraal that has a Shebeen attached to it. When we get there we buy a couple of cokes and raid the cooler boxes for some food. I go on a walk about and find almost immediately some scary shit. Just off the goat path are two RPG’s  they have been fired but did not detonate, the nose cones tips, which is the trigger, are dented and the fins at the rear are open. RPG’s self detonate at about 950m if they do not hit anything. These have malfunctioned. I gently lift one and feel the weigh, yip, it is full of explosives. They are lying neatly next to each other, so the goat herd boy must have found them and brought them here. Bad, they could pop any time, theoretically. I take a photo of them, for future reference, a bad one as I only had a really shitty little camera.

I wander off into the hills; catch 2 small snakes and a scorpion. The snakes are a harmless burrowing type; the scorpion has big pinches and a small tail and sting. The rule of thumb is: big pinchers, small tail, not so venomous. Small pinchers, big tail, watch out.

A compilation of my Strange Classrooms is soon to be released, please “Like” and  keep an eye on this page.

THE MEXICAN HORSE THIEF

Here is a story of developing and breaking an addiction, while dealing with Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome at the same time.

THE CHRONICLES OF THE MEXICAN HORSE THIEF II

 

 

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