The Elephant Whisperer: My Life With the Herd in the African Wild

by Lawrence Anthony

  chapter thirty-four

  There hadn’t been a snakebite on Thula Thula for nearly sixty years. The previous owners had been here for fifty years without incident and we had been bite free for the eight years we had been here.

  This is not surprising, for although Thula Thula, like every African game reserve slithers with serpents of all types and sizes, these intriguing reptiles avoid man for three very good reasons. Firstly, they don’t want to get stomped on and will move away long before you get near them; secondly, humans are not their prey; and thirdly, they have long since learned that we will kill them for no other reason than that they exist.

  The only exception to the first proviso is the puff adder. It relies on its dull yellow-brown and black colouring as camouflage, and will not budge however close you come. It has a thick body, averaging about three feet in length, and because it is so aggressive it is responsible for more deaths in African than any other snake. Every veteran ranger has at some time stood on – or almost on – an immobile puffy, only noticing afterwards that he or she has just missed a deadly injection of venom. They just don’t move, sometimes even if you stand on them. But they do bite, faster than you can jump.

  Dispelling myths about snakes opens the minds of visitors to appreciating and perhaps even befriending these fascinating creatures that are so vital to the environment, particularly in keeping down rodent populations.

  There is, however, one snake that is a law unto itself.

  ‘We’ve just lost two zebra,’ said John Tinley, the veteran ranger from KZN Wildlife’s Fundimvelo reserve next door who had stopped in for a cup of tea one day. ‘Both dead, right next to the waterhole, fat and healthy, no sign of disease and not a mark on them.’

  He looked at me waiting for comment, testing me.

  ‘OK, what happened?’ I said, taking the game out of it.

  ‘Black mamba,’ he replied, blowing on his hot tea. ‘Killed both of them. Stone dead.’

  ‘You’re having me on,’ I said sitting up. ‘A mamba killed two adult zebra?’

  He clicked his fingers. ‘Just like that. They were history when we got there. They must have frightened the damn thing, or stood on it … or something.’

  ‘You’re sure?’ I asked, amazed at what I was hearing. A zebra can weigh 600 pounds. ‘Two of them?’

  ‘The spoor doesn’t lie. There isn’t another snake that leaves marks like that. You may have seen the fire. I burned the bodies. Don’t want anybody or anything eating that meat, not even hyena.’

  As soon as he was gone I got on the phone and after a couple of calls I sank back in my chair. He was right, a mamba can easily kill a zebra; in fact it can kill almost anything – lion, towering kudu bulls … even giraffe have been dropped. As for humans, one mamba packs enough venom to kill up to forty adults.

  It grows up to fifteen feet long and is as thick as a man’s arm. It’s also the fastest snake around, sometimes hurtling along with its head three or four feet above the ground. To complete the picture, it’s not actually black; more of a metal grey. However, the inside of its mouth is pitch-black, hence its name. The sight of a mamba almost gliding with its coffin-shaped head raised several feet above a grassy plain is the ultimate game-viewing experience.

  Several days afterwards, I was in my office when I heard Biyela shouting at the top of his voice.

  ‘Mkhulu, come quick! Mamba!’ The word galvanized me and I grabbed my shotgun, locked up Max, and bolted outside to find Biyela standing at the rear of the house, backed up against a storeroom wall, pointing.

  ‘Mamba!’ he shouted again.

  I put my finger to my lips to get him to lower his voice. He nodded, thankful for the presence of the shotgun and pointed to a small fenced-off courtyard which housed general bric-a-brac.

  ‘It went in there.’

  ‘You sure it was a mamba?’ I asked, aware that for Biyela all snakes are automatically mambas.

  ‘Ngempela – absolutely.’

  As a rule we never kill snakes. Even with a black mamba we try for a catch and release into the bush. But if something so lethal looked like it was going to escape into the house, I wouldn’t hesitate to shoot it. The last thing I wanted was several slithering yards of venom surfacing in one of the bedrooms or settling down behind some sofa cushions.

  We edged closer and suddenly Biyela grabbed my sleeve and we watched the tail disappearing – of all places into our open bedroom window.

  ‘Damn!’ I exclaimed as I started running back around to the front door with Biyela hot on my heels.

  We rounded the still-open front door at a dash and bolted through into the bedroom and stopped dead. Edging in, we cautiously scanned the area immediately around us, then the floor of the room, and then the poles spanning the thatched roof above us. Nothing, nothing at all. It had gone. We searched everywhere, under the bed, in the cupboards, behind the curtains. Everywhere. It had completely, but completely disappeared.

  ‘This is unbelievable. A mamba in our bedroom and we can’t find it? A bloody mamba for Pete’s sake! Where the hell is it?’

  ‘They are like ghosts,’ Biyela replied.

  Dismayed, I suddenly I heard Françoise chatting outside with some of the staff. ‘What do you mean there’s a mamba in my bedroom? Where’s Lawrence?’

  ‘Hi. I’m here in the lounge!’ I called out, trying to sound unconcerned.

  She walked in with Bijou scampering at her heels. ‘What’s all this nonsense about a mamba in our bedroom?’

  ‘Well … maybe. I think there was one but now … well, maybe it’s gone.’ I nodded sternly as if I was in total control of the situation.

  ‘You’re not sure if there is a mamba in our room?’ She stood on tiptoes peering over my shoulder through the bedroom door. ‘Well, OK oh great white hunter. I’m sleeping at the lodge tonight and if you are so sure it’s gone you can stay here. Just make sure your will is up to date.’

  Then Bijou, who had somehow slipped past us, started growling from the bedroom and I instinctively knew she had found it. Or worse, maybe the deadly snake had found her.

  I hurtled back into the bedroom. In the middle of the floor was the poodle … and rearing itself directly in front of her was … not a mamba but a full-grown Mozambican spitting cobra. A mfezi – Max’s favourite adversary. But unlike Max, who would quickly circle a reptile before striking, Bijou was no snake fighter.

  The snake was in the classic attack position: head raised and hood flared, hypnotically focused on this bite-sized ball of fluff before it. Luckily, emboldened by our arrival, Bijou started prancing about and yapping for all she was worth, denying the lethal serpent a fixed target.

  Now while an mfezi has enough venom to kill a man, it plummets way below a mamba on the snake Richter scale. Relief poured out of my system.

  A black mamba, as mentioned earlier, is actually grey, almost the exact same top colour as a mfezi. From the tail slithering into the window Biyela and I had somehow mistaken one for the other. But my relief that it was ‘only’ a deadly Mozambican spitting cobra was soon tempered by the fact that if anything happened to Bijou, Françoise’s wrath would ensure I’d be on my way to the North Pole without a sleigh.

  ‘Lawrence! Do something!’

  Adjusting my glasses closer to my face for protection against venom spray, then shutting my mouth (recently opened for a retort) for the same reason, I edged around the poised snake, scooped up the excited poodle and delivered her still yapping to Françoise.

  Biyela then handed me my trusty snake-catching broom and I moved in cautiously, not wishing to antagonize Mr Mfezi any more than absolutely necessary. I manoeuvred the broom painfully slowly towards the erect serpent, which – as they usually do – allowed the bristle-head to be eased under its body. For some reason the reptile is not threatened by the broom. However, the momentum of the broom moving forward gently ‘trips’ the upright snake – which is only balancing on the bottom half of its body – onto the broom’s head. Once it co
llapses onto the broom head, it’s a simple matter of lifting the broom up by the handle with the snake still coiled on the far end and carrying it outside. I then released it a good distance from the house.

  Hallelujah! Bijou was saved and I was accorded mega domestic hero status with Françoise. I was also pleased that a couple of trainee rangers had witnessed the capture and afterwards I went over the broom technique again with them, stressing that it only worked with cobras and they had to be upright in the attack position before you could edge the broom underneath the lower part of their body.

  Unfortunately a few days later the impromptu lesson had serious unintended consequences.

  ‘Code Red! Snakebite at the main house!’ the rapid-fire call cranked out of the Land Rover’s radio as Brendan and I were parked out in the bush with the herd, watching Mandla playfully wrestling with the much larger Mabula.

  Brendan’s reply was cool and calculated, just what was needed to calm the panic. ‘Who was bitten, where, and what type of snake?’

  ‘It’s the new trainee Brett. We think it may be a black mamba. We’re trying to find it so we can do the identification. ’

  As the voice trailed off I felt sick to my stomach. Black mamba! Flooring the Land Rover’s accelerator I rushed back to the house in a blur, unable to get a word in among the frenetic radioactivity.

  The drive from Thula Thula to the hospital in Empangeni was about forty minutes, way too long in case of a full-dose mamba bite, which can kill in half that time. Also, we didn’t keep mamba serum on the reserve. In fact nobody keeps it on hand, for the simple reason that it goes rotten after a short time. Sometimes the serum could kill you as surely as a bite.

  ‘God, I hope it’s not a mamba,’ I prayed. ‘And if it is, then not a big one.’

  But I knew that didn’t matter, for even a day-old hatchling mamba packs enough venom to kill a full-grown man.

  I pulled into the parking area behind our house in a billow of dust, leapt out and ran over to where the rangers were gathered around a large dead snake, hoping against hope that it wasn’t a mamba.

  It was.

  ‘Who took Brett to hospital?’ I asked.

  ‘Nobody. He wanted to pack a suitcase, but we’re going to take him now,’ came the absurd reply from another trainee.

  ‘What! Does he know it was a bloody mamba?’

  ‘Yes, but it was only a small bite on the finger.’

  ‘Only on the finger! For Pete’s sake – it’s a mamba! It doesn’t matter where it bit!’

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing and yelled at Brett, who had just appeared from his room carrying a suitcase as if he was going on holiday, to hurry.

  I then took a deep breath, the last thing I wanted to do was panic the kid. ‘Brett,’ I said quietly. ‘Please don’t run as it will only increase your heart rate and spread the venom. This is a mamba. OK? Show me the bite.’

  He gave me his hand and there on the finger was the fang wound. I exhaled with relief. Just one puncture.

  ‘Did it hook into you?’ I asked.

  ‘No. It just struck at me and moved off, but my finger is getting as sore as hell.’

  With no purchase to inject venom and only one fang in one finger Brett might – maybe just – have a chance.

  ‘Are your hands tingling?’

  ‘Yes, strange you should say that. So are my toes.’

  Tingling in the extremities are the first symptoms of a mamba bite, a sure sign that venom was in his system.

  ‘That’s from the bite. You must go right now. Just slow everything down – your breathing – everything down.’

  I then turned to the driver. ‘Go like hell,’ I hissed, making sure Brett couldn’t hear me. He nodded and sped off.

  I looked at my watch, six precious minutes had passed since the bite and we had no way of knowing how much venom was in his body. If it was anything more than just a scratch we had to accept that he would be dead before they got halfway to town. I put the horrible thought of the phone call I’d have to make to his family out of my mind.

  ‘What happened?’ I asked Bheki.

  ‘Ayish, that young man doesn’t listen. We were here when we saw the mamba in there.’ He pointed to the small courtyard behind our bedroom window.

  I stared at the courtyard, the same one where Biyela had seen a snake earlier that week and it suddenly dawned what had happened. There were two snakes that day. Biyela had been absolutely right. It was indeed a mamba he had seen going in to the courtyard. It must have came face to face with the mfezi, which then bolted out of the courtyard and climbed into our window to get away, straight into the growls of ‘brave’ Bijou. The mamba had been operating from the courtyard ever since.

  ‘Yehbo,’ said Biyela who was standing next to Bheki, as if reading my thoughts. ‘It was a mamba I saw, not an mfezi. We became confused.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Brett took a broom to the mamba. I told him this snake was too dangerous and that you only use the broom for mfezi but he did not listen. I tried to stop him but it was too late and the mamba bit him. Now maybe he will die.’

  ‘Who shot the mamba?’

  ‘I did. It was very angry and moving everywhere.’

  ‘Well done.’

  Ten minutes later I picked up my cellphone and dialled the driver.

  ‘How’s Brett?’

  ‘Sweating and salivating. But he’s still coherent and it’s not far to the hospital. I’m just about flying at this speed.’

  ‘OK, let us know when the doctor is with him.’

  As bad as it sounded, I knew from that rudimentary diagnosis that Brett had a slim chance. He was in for a rough ride, but if the bite had been lethal he would have already started vomiting and losing muscle control, the final fatal symptoms.

  Ten minutes later we heard from the driver that they had arrived at the hospital. Brett was rushed into intensive care and stayed there for two days fighting for his life. And it wasn’t even a bite, just a fang fractionally nicking a finger.

  We have often seen mambas since that incident, all of them just carrying on with their lives but that bite will go down as our only snake crisis in over half a century. And it’s a story the trainees will never forget.

  chapter thirty-five

  Nana’s oldest daughter Nandi’s swollen stomach was attracting a lot of finger-pointing.

  Named after King Shaka’s influential mother, Nandi – which means ‘good and nice’ – had stamped her own definitive temperament on the herd: dignified, confident and alert. As a teenager, she had been with the herd in the famous breakout the day after they arrived at Thula Thula, and had now blossomed into a twenty-two-year-old adult. She was inheriting from Nana the hallmarks of a potential matriarch. And she was very pregnant.

  The father, of course, was Mnumzane and with Nandi ballooning like a keg we were expecting a big healthy baby. The whole of Thula Thula was waiting for the good news.

  Johnny, a likeable new ranger, was first on the scene when it happened. Blonde, good-looking in a boyish way, he had recently joined us and his easy smile made him popular with the staff. He radioed me and, surprisingly, didn’t sound that happy. ‘We’ve just found Nandi down near the river but we can’t see the baby properly. The herd’s gathered around and won’t let us anywhere near her. They’re acting most peculiarly.’

  ‘Where are you exactly?’ I asked, heading for the door and taking the portable radio with me.

  ‘Just before the first river crossing on the lodge road. Take the back route otherwise you won’t get past the elephants.’

  It was mid-morning and the sun was already blistering down. The mercury was topping 100 degrees Fahrenheit and soaring as I leaned over and groped for my cap on the Land Rover’s floor. Being fair-skinned, I had learned the hard way to watch myself in the merciless African sun. Max sat in the passenger’s seat, head out the window, tongue out lapping at the passing scents.

  I found Johnny and Brendan easily enough. J
ust as Johnny had said, fifty yards away stood the herd gathered in an unusually tightly knit group.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘We don’t know,’ said Johnny. ‘We can’t get close enough to see anything. But they’ve been there for a while now.’

  I walked off into the bush, keeping my distance, trying to find a spot from where I could get a peek through the obviously flustered herd. At last I got a glimpse of the brand-new baby on the ground in the middle.

  The fact it was lying down sent alarms jangling. The infant should already be on its feet. All wildlife in Africa stands, albeit tottering, almost instantly after birth, and for a good reason. A vulnerable baby on the ground is asking for trouble, an easy snack for predators. Even elephants, with their formidable bulk, move away as soon as possible from a birth spot where the smell of the placenta will attract lurking carnivores.

  I needed to find out what was going on so I started approaching on a slow zigzag path, carefully watching to see how close they would let me come. I got to about twenty yards away when Frankie caught a glimpse of me and rose to her full height, taking two or three menacing steps forward until she recognized who it was and dropped her ears. But she held her position and from her demeanour I could tell she didn’t want me any nearer. Once she was sure I had got the message, she turned back to the baby lying in front of her.

  I could now at least see what was going on, and my heart sank. The little one, invigorated by the elemental energy that surges in new life, was desperately attempting to stand up. Time and time again it tried, patiently lifted by the trunks of its mother Nandi, its grandmother and matriarch Nana and its aunt Frankie. But, heartbreakingly, each time as it rose half up it fell back, only to start trying to get up again. This had obviously been going on for a while and my heart went out to the baby and the desperate family.

  It was blazing hot and with absolute rotten luck the baby was lying in the middle of the only open space among the trees, right out in the blazing sun. To compound matters, it was also off the grass, lying on hot sand.