We live in far north-eastern Botswana on a heavily wooded property that overlooks the Chobe / Zambezi River confluence. We have a constant parade of wild animals around our boundaries. Elephants, buffalo, hyaena, hippo and leopards are regulars as are bushbuck and an assortment of other herbivores and small predators. We have, rather scaringly also encountered wild dogs and lions on our early morning walks with our dogs. The property is protected by an electric fence which largely keeps the bigger animals at bay but which presents little obstacle to pesky primates – baboons, monkeys and even ill-intentioned humans and almost none to the hugely agile leopard that lived in and around our property. Yet my late wife so loved the adventure of camping in the open that she refused to live in a conventional house with the result that we camped in a tent, albeit one under an iron roof to keep us dry in the rainy season and with a large, well-appointed bathroom as her concession to comfort.
My daughter, Skye, had just turned sixteen and was home from boarding school for the Christmas holidays. She had grown up with the sound of elephants rumbling and trumpeting near the tent, hippos calling from their pool in the confluence and the nightly whoop of the hyaenas. She also accepted that there was a good chance that the leopard was inside our fence. So far it had not attacked our dogs but as we had no doors on the house that was always a possibility.
* * *
Skye:
A cricket bat. That’s what my dad gave me to protect myself against the leopard that was prowling around our garden late one night. It was about a week after my sixteenth birthday and we had decided that after almost two decades and much debate, it was time to add a door to our bush home. It was due to these long-awaited renovations that my dad was sleeping in a cottage on the other side of the property, while the fur family and I stayed in my childhood bedroom at the main house.
The newest addition to our little clan – and my birthday and Christmas present that year – was a beautiful golden retriever puppy, who we named Asante (Santi for short). She was the most wonderful thing I had ever seen, golden inside and out, naughty but cute enough to get away with it, a ball of fluff with big bright eyes like a teddy bear brought to life.
I looked at my dad dubiously when he handed me the cricket bat. “It’s a little bit dark outside for sport, isn’t it?”
He grinned. “I saw a leopard next to the swimming pool; it won’t come into the house, but just in case”.
I was used to this, having two safari guides for parents, neither of whom ever carried a rifle in the bush. While my peers were sitting safely in a classroom singing their ABCs, I, since a toddler, had been traipsing behind my dad in Moremi, reciting the dos and don’ts of running into a dagga boy. I rolled my eyes as my dad headed down to the cottage for the night and chucked the cricket bat onto the couch next to my bed. He was always coming up with new ways to try and inspire me to quit horse riding and take up a more conventional (and less expensive) sport. What would he come up with next? By this point, I had faced down the big five with him countless times, we had outrun a buffalo, charged at elephants, chased off lions and even been up close and personal with a leopard. He should have known by then that the only way to scare me was to bring up the one species that I was – and am to this day – absolutely petrified of. Snakes. I kissed Santi on the nose and climbed into bed, leaving her to curl up on her favourite blanket close to the bedroom door.
A few hours later I was woken by a scene that will forever haunt my nightmares. All hell had let loose. Blood curdling screams, ferocious snarls and sounds of fighting, smells of blood, urine, faeces – and something far worse, that I could not identify. I dived for the light switch, my mind reeling with images of the leopard tearing my dogs apart. It wasn’t a leopard though. It was, at least to my adolescent brain, certainly much worse. A snake.
A 3.5metre python, its jaws clamped around Asante’s little golden head, was slowly coiling around her fluffy body. Our other dogs were behind the monster attacking it, each other, and everything in between. In response, the python was producing a smell so vile, it made my eyes water and my lungs burn. I grabbed the cricket bat off the couch and charged at the snake, hitting its body as hard as I could and screaming for help.
It was futile. The reptile didn’t even acknowledge my desperate attempts to save my puppy. Its muscles were so strong that it felt like hitting a tractor tyre. I watched as the last traces of gold disappeared under its tight coils. It was then that Santi fell silent. I felt my heart squeeze and my stomach turn to liquid. Aiming for the beast’s head now, I swung the bat with all my strength. Its mouth released her and lunged for me instead, open and hissing. I swung the bat again but missed. At that moment close family friends, who were renting a cottage on the property, burst in, having heard my screams. They were armed with brooms and immediately began whacking the snake, keeping it distracted. This was my chance; I grabbed my cell phone and dialled my dad. His sleepy voice answered after two rings. “What’s wrong?”
* * *
Peter:
I had blearily reached for the phone ringing next to my ear. I saw it was Skye calling. She would only phone me in the middle of the night if she had an emergency.
“What’s wrong?” I mumbled.
In reply I received a torrent of hysterical gibberish.
“Calm down and tell me what the problem is,” I asked, now fully awake.
More panic-stricken gibberish, so I just shouted, “I’m coming!”
I grabbed my shorts and the two weapons that I had selected to confront the leopard, should there be a problem – a Bushman spear and a Xhosa war club – and sprinted the length of the garden to find Skye standing at the kitchen door.
“It’s Santi!” she screamed. “It’s trying to kill her.” I had visions of a leopard mauling the puppy but when I dashed into the bedroom area I saw a python coiled twice around the young dog with its extended mouth over Asante’s head. The dog was trying feebly to struggle but was helpless in the grasp of the giant snake. One friend was bravely trying to beat the python with her broom, but really was achieving little more than tickling it, while her husband was hammering at its head. He also had a broomstick which was totally inadequate for the job, so I took over with my superior weaponry. With the Xhosa club in my stronger right hand and the spear in my left I set about trying to save the puppy.
Worry turned to anger. The brute was trying to kill my young daughter’s Christmas present. Skye had lost her mom at the age of thirteen and now she was about to lose her beautiful, gentle golden retriever to this vile serpent. My rage lent power to my blows as I beat its thick, muscular body with the stout club. Again and again I rained blows down on it but I seemed to be making no impression, as it tried to gain a third coil around Santi and there was no sign of its releasing her. I wanted blood – revenge for the devastation that this serpent had brought to my daughter’s life, so I redoubled my efforts. Slowly it started to react and its mouth left the pup’s head to strike at me. With a wild swing of the club I managed to hit it squarely and at that point the snake had finally had enough. It started to uncoil from its prey, which was no longer showing any signs of life, then managed to slither under the couch where I could not easily reach it.
I turned my attention to Santi whose lifeless body was lying prostrate on the ground. I gently picked her up and carried her tenderly to the kitchen where Skye had waited, following the sounds of the battle.
With tears in her eyes Skye asked, “Is she dead, dad?”
“I think so my girl. I’ll lay her down on this blanket because I must get that python out of our house – one way or another…,” I said between gritted teeth, as I went to find out from our friends where they thought the snake was hiding.
* * *
Skye:
I sat, glued to the spot, and stared at Santi’s limp little body, my mind spinning. The putrid smell of the python was rolling off her in waves, making it difficult to focus. There were no practising vets in Kasane. Should I google how to do CPR on a dog? Why hadn’t I done that already?! I should have known something like this could happen. I should have been prepared. Should I phone a vet in Gaborone or Johannesburg for advice? Would they help me? My mom would have known exactly what to do, why hadn’t I paid more attention to her lessons. I was wasting precious time. Was it already too late? She hadn’t moved, hadn’t taken a breath in minutes.
I slowly crouched down next to her, trying not to gag at the stench and reached my hands out to smooth the soft fur on her belly. Her body suddenly jerked stiffly upright, eyes bulging and tongue lolling out of her mouth. I screamed and snatched my hands away, my heart nearly leaping right out of my chest.
My dad burst back through the kitchen door. “What’s happened now?”
I pointed a trembling finger at Santi, who was twitching slightly, the muscles in her back flexing.
When I was around 4 years old, I found a dead snake in the garden. It had been attacked by the resident troop of mongooses and left with its head barely attached and many brutal battle scars. I had poked at its body with a stick to confirm its demise and then run, shrieking, into the house after it lurched upright, the already decomposing head hanging at a 90-degree angle. My mom had calmly tried to explain the process of rigor mortis, which I had thoroughly rejected, claiming instead that I had uncovered ‘zombie snakes’ and moving my bed into my parents’ bedroom – for their protection of course. Was that what was happening to Santi, I wondered.
Luckily, this was no zombie episode. My dad and I watched, wide eyed, as my Christmas puppy slowly came back to life. She stretched out her little legs, shook her head, let out a loud yap and then positioned herself in her favourite pose – flat on her tummy, with all four limbs spread out, like a frog – later earning her the nickname “Frog dog”. My dad shook his head in disbelief, as I wrapped Santi up in a blanket and hugged her, vowing to never let her out of my sight again.
* * *
Peter:
The ‘red mist’ cleared the moment that I saw Santi sit up in her frog position with her tongue out, panting normally as if she had not very recently avoided becoming a midnight snack for a huge serpent. My concern now was for the snake’s wellbeing. It was breathing raspingly. Had I punctured its lungs? I had certainly hit it hard enough to have done some real damage. If I had injured its lungs its chances of survival were not good. I needed to ensure that it was secured during observation and neither Skye nor our friends were physically strong enough to help me lift and transfer the snake to a bin. I decided to call my long-time friend Mark Vanderwalle who lived nearby and who had opened a snake park in Kasane as part of his research programme. He wasn’t pleased with being woken at 3am and it took some urging to assure him that this was truly a snake worth getting out of bed for.
When he came over he elected to handle the head with those fearsome teeth, while I took the other end with its defensive anal scent gland. It wrapped its tail halfway around my forearm, and so enormously powerfully that I could still feel the lethal pressure the next morning. How Santi survived with two and a half coils trying to squeeze her to death I will never know. We managed to manoeuvre the snake into the bin and secure the lid.
* * *
Skye:
Both Santi and the python demonstrated a remarkable ability to recover. The snake healed well and now, receives a diet of mainly warthog carcasses at Caracal, the animal rehab and snake park owned and run by Mark, golden retriever long off the menu.
It took about six weeks of daily baths to rid Santi of the python smell and she understandably harboured a deep hatred for all things reptilian for the rest of her life, keeping a wide berth from the monitor lizard who tends to share dinner with the dogs every evening. Otherwise, there was little indication of the trauma she endured. My miracle girl filled our days with joy and lots of laughter for almost a decade and now rests peacefully in her favourite spot at the bottom of the garden, overlooking the Chobe River.
Wow….