A Snake in the Boot

It rained last Thursday night and the patio was still wet on Friday morning. I grabbed my gumboots, which reside just outside the sliding door, and slipped them on. “Yikes – what was that?” I asked Duma, my ridgeback shadow.

I knew something had taken up refuge in my boot as soon as my right foot touched the ground. I managed to withdraw it before putting any weight down and shook the boot out.

Countless books on the wide outdoors warn that you should shake your shoes out before putting them on. Once I crushed a creature in my boot – a snail that went “crunch” and spread slime over my socks. This time, I knew it wasn’t a snail but was certainly not expecting the tiny snake that dropped to the ground after I’d given the boot a hard knock.

It was brown, thin and around 20 centimetres long. Recognising it as a harmless common slug-eater, I picked it up by its tail to move it to a safer location. It didn’t like that and started to twist around, setting Duma on high alert. I told him not to be foolish and tossed the reptile into a nearby fern.

Many people back away from snakes in fear. Indeed, most snakes justify such a reaction, but slug-eaters are different. Up to 40 centimetres in length, they’re completely harmless. Except to slugs and snails, their only food source.

Naturally shy creatures, slug-eaters normally hide away under lawn edges or leaf litter. Not long ago I disturbed one when I was clearing fallen leaves off the path down to the river. It was tightly rolled in a messy tangle, which is why it’s called a “tabakrolletjie” in Afrikaans.

I picked it up, laid it on the palm of my hand and watched it unroll, head-first. There’s something beautiful about the way a snake moves. I let it slide sinuously through my fingers, playing it between my hands, marvelling at the cool and smooth feeling, watching its tiny forked tongue flick in and out. Eventually, I lowered my hand to the ground and it slithered off into the undergrowth.

Other creatures in our garden are not always so kind to slug-eaters. Once, I found one being attacked by Trixie, a little terrier I thought would never harm a fly. But a terrier is a terrier: she dealt a mortal blow before I could intervene.

Another time, Siegie and I were idly watching a group of hadedas aerating the lawn with their long bills in search of a tasty worm or caterpillar. One of them was probing along the edging when it suddenly pulled out a fully grown slug-eater. You could almost see the shock as it wondered what to do with the wriggling reptile. Fortunately, it dropped it and the snake beat a hasty retreat.

Yesterday was a perfect gardening day. Picking up my boots, and mindful of Friday’s experience, I knocked them against the wall and tipped them upside down. Blow me down – the same little snake spilled out. Silly little snake. You can’t hold me responsible if you get crushed.

Hadeda Hiatus

I was sitting reading the paper one late afternoon when a couple of hadedas flew in and made a clumsy landing on the lawn. Soon joined by two more, they started ambling in a slow procession, poking the grass with their large bills.

There’d been a rain shower the night before and the ground was nice and soft. Clearly there were rich pickings: every second prod evoked something juicy that was thrown back into gaping throats. It was a peaceful scene – but it wouldn’t last.

Whoever coined the phrase “let sleeping dogs lie”? As anyone with any sense knows, sleeping dogs keep their ears and eyes in standby mode and wake whenever anything vaguely exciting appears to be about to happen. Unless, of course, they’re about to be thrown out of the house for the night, in which case they pretend to be dead to the world.

At all other times, however, they react to triggers that they know promise reward – such as the food cupboard being opened or hiking boots appearing.

Or hadedas on the lawn. With no warning, there was a sudden explosion from the dog cushions under the stairs and a wild scrabbling of paws on the tiles. Bursting out the sliding door onto the patio, Rhea dashed across the lawn. Great brown birds scattered in all directions, raucously shouting “hah-dee-dah, hah-dee-dah”.

Caught up in the thrill of the chase, Rhea overran the edge of the lawn and collected herself rather ungracefully in the flower beds. Then she looked back over her shoulder and realised that the hadedas had merely flown up into the air and landed back on the lawn behind her. She ran back up the lawn, scattering them once more.

But the hadedas had played this game too often and now they’d landed back on the lawn further down. The dog joined me in the lounge, gathering the remnants of her ridgeback pride, and clunked herself down on the floor. Facing the lawn, she lay with her face on her paws, feigning indifference.

She was watching, however, and soon the temptation once more became too much and she exploded out the door to resume the chase. Sluggishly, they rose up from the lawn, leaving it almost to the last minute, wheeled round and landed again. Head down, Rhea ran at them, again and again. Finally, the hadedas had had enough and disappeared over the roof. Rhea retired to her cushion in triumph.

A few minutes later, Siegie came home. “There are a whole load of hadedas round the front,” he told me.

Rhea and I both knew the reason why. But hers was a fleeting victory: the hadedas would be back on the lawn and she’d have to start hounding them all over again.