Without getting into a bag swinging contest here, as I am very much on the same side as you guys, I am the last guy to kill anything unnecessarily. I am the guy who stops to move tortoises out of the road, who builds a special tool to take spiders out of the house, who would catch a porcupine in a vanghok and relocate it rather than shoot it. But sometimes, much as I understand and value snakes and the role they play in controlling rodents and other pests, I can not take a chance. My 2IB will vouch for the fact that I have removed a lot (yes plenty) of puffadders into the veld away from the house. For me they are easier to handle than a Mozambique spitting cobra, a boomslang or a rinkhals. If you guys were closer, I would call you every time I spotted a snake in my werf, but this is not always practical or possible. I have shot 4 boomslange in the past 2 weeks (including the one pictured above), all of them within 3 metres of my house.
Elsewhere on this thread or on the forum I have posted pix of a geelslang in my 2IB's clothes cupboard, a rinkhals in our kitchen cupboards and a rinkhals in our living room. If any snake handler can get here very quickly to remove them unharmed and safely, I would be the first guy to make use of that service.
Below are some pix of one of my horses that was bitten on the chin by a puff adder. Not much fun dosing her 10 liters of drinking water every 2 hours for 3 weeks. Not much fun for her either not being able to eat for almost 5 weeks. I am also sure she didn't much enjoy having her tongue start to decompose in her mouth as a side effect of the venom or that she battled to breath and couldn't see out of her eyes for much of those three weeks. This is the reality of having snakes in close proximity to your living quarters.
I respect all living things as everything has a place in the circle of life. I am not a wanton snake or anything else killer
