Wild life | 14 January 2016

On New Year’s Day I took the family out for an evening walk on the ranch. Along the verges, lush after rains, I urged our children, Eve and Rider, to help me collect specimens of different plants, or identify wildlife spoor or scat. I wore shorts and flip-flops. As usual I was talking too much to my wife Claire, when I was stunned into silence by Eve, who cried out loudly, as if the world was ending, and pointed at the ground in front of me. I froze. I had not looked where I was going and my right foot was about six inches from the head of a puff adder, fat and four-foot long. I recoiled and my herpetologist pals will be annoyed to hear that on an automatic impulse I killed the beautiful creature. Usually, I would never hurt a snake. I felt it was a matter of survival. When I held Eve, my little saviour from the serpent, she wept with shock. Puff adders kill many, their bites leading to death within a day if untreated. The venom causes flesh to rot. Philoctetes, history’s most famous puff-adder victim, stank so badly the Troy-bound Greeks marooned him on Lemnos.

I am very grateful Eve saved me from a venomous snake, but if any of us were to be bitten clearly I’d want it to be me. Out walking on the farm I always have the crowned plovers dive-bombing me with piercing cries to divert the intruder from their brood. Like any father and husband, being the lightning rod for danger was a role I always wished for myself, and not only to protect those I love by standing at the breach of any oncoming peril. I also ardently hope that any misfortune lurking in the vicinity of the homestead might be distracted from pursuing my people and come after me instead.