Spring is the season of slithering

Durban - While the recent cold weather has kept snakes out of sight, many species are expected to resume their spring activities once the weather warms up.

Snake catcher Jason Arnold said the poisonous snake most out and about was the Mozambique spitting cobra.

However, the most common snake around at the moment is the harmless spotted bush snake, according to another snake catcher, Nick Evans.

“Every day someone mistakes one for a green mamba!” he said.

“As soon as it gets hotter everything will be cruising around, looking for a mate,” said Arnold who, before the cold spell, was summoned to Carrington Heights to flush one out.

“A 4-year-old walked into a bedroom, saw a snake and called his mother. When I arrived it had moved. Eventually I found it in the lounge, under a couch.”

Arnold said the child had done the right thing – back off quickly and call an adult, as had his mother, by calling a snake catcher.

On the South Coast James Wittstock, reptile curator at Crocworld Conservation Centre, has been busy with a number of calls, and the retrieval of a 2.45m male black mamba from a bathroom at Umzinto Water Works, which reported a black mamba in a bathroom.

Wittstock took it to the centre before it was released.

A few days later, he recovered a 1.96m male green mamba from Renishaw farm in Scottburgh.