The 'Seven Stepper'

On a recent trip, I had an interesting snake encounter. I was waiting for the guys I was with to get back into the pickup when I looked out of the passenger window. There on the grass only a few feet away was an enormous black mamba, looking very calm, coiled in a lazy circle with its head held up in the centre.

I recognised it at once by its supercilious smile as it carefully surveyed the scene. I shouted that there was a ‘really bad’ snake and everyone should get into the pickup. Just as I thought I should take a photo it started to slither into a hole in a dead tree trunk whilst its tail began to thrash around angrily.



I wondered what would happen next. Then we saw that there was a herd of cattle coming through the trees towards us. Someone shouted at the moran herders to warn them. Straight away they came towards us picking up small rocks and circling warily round the dead tree trunk. Then the one nearest the car saw the head appear out of the hole and start to go for him. He immediately chopped down onto the snake’s back with his long-bladed spear. The snake started to writhe around and I saw the spear was bent so he quickly changed to using his herding stick.




(What I particularly love about this photo is that he kept hold of his umbrella, spear and water bottle in the other hand throughout the process! That’s one cool warrior in my book!)

The other moran came from the other direction and joined the fray.



It was all over in a very short time and the snake was lifted into the air and displayed as truly dead. It was about 7 feet long and about 3-4 inches across at its thickest!



We left them to hoist the body into a tree for the birds and drove on with many excited comments about mambas. The immediate instinct here is to kill snakes whether they are venomous or not. We often find ourselves defending them and begging people to leave them be, especially if they are obviously completely harmless like a common house snake. However, this one was a killer and could have attacked the herd of cattle so I left them to do what they had to do. The snake had seemed oddly calm to start with and the others thought that it had eaten something recently. However, it was definitely angry and coming towards the moran when he struck it.

They call the black mamba ‘the seven step snake’ as the poison is so potent that you only have seven steps of life left. They are also very quick and aggressive snakes and can bite repeatedly, easily able to kill several full grown cattle in one attack.

Then the stories started......a man in South Africa had driven over one and it had caught onto the chassis of the car and held on to the running board until he reached his hotel. As he got out of the car it bit him and he died.....

And a friend, driving along in his pick up full of people, stopped to look at one on the side of the road. It went for them, the passengers leapt up onto the roof bars, our friend slammed the cab window shut, the black mamba slithered up under the bonnet and they had no choice but to continue their journey. Upon arrival, they gathered round the car armed with sticks, lifted the bonnet carefully with a VERY long stick and there it was curled up on the engine!