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Jeffrey Spahr-Summers , US
Global
Lay-Correspondent Report on South Africa
5
Nightmares and
Snakes
Beyond the standard
childhood nightmare, where one must constantly escape from some
unspecific but horrific beast that is forever in pursuit, it
wasn’t long before I began having my own brand of nightmares.
Snakes were in abundance throughout the country, as well as, a
chilling phenomenon, snake parks. Dad insisted we go into every
snake park we came across for six years. They terrified me.
Always, there were huge, deep, basically no more than empty
swimming pools where attendants (conspicuously, I noticed,
courageous yet foolhardy African men) wearing waist-high rubber
waders and carrying long sticks as they waded through hundreds
or thousands of snakes. This image, as I have just described it
became my nightmare … the very ground came alive with snakes; I
was always running, running from and over them, climbing
whenever I could, but always the snakes were upon me … my new
monsters.
The snakes are still my monsters and lately they’ve come back to
help me write.
Every encounter I had with snakes, on the ridge or around the
house, struck home on a very personal level. I frequently ran
home breathless, petrified, having just run into one snake or
another. Our house was no longer a refuge after finding two
Night Adders (one each on different occasions) in my bedroom.
When I came across the first snake I immediately called for Dad,
I must have been very pale or just obviously scared; Mom
instantly asked, “Jeff is there a snake in there?” I ignored her
and called for Dad again, who promptly came and beat the snake
to death with a wooden slat from my desk chair. Two weeks later,
I found the second snake and again I called for Dad, who killed
it in the same manner.
Mambas are particularly unnerving, all black and incredibly
ferocious; they are commonly found in corn fields. Unlike most
snakes, Mambas do not hide or retreat for protection, they
aggressively seek out confrontations and they are very fast. In
Oklahoma many years later, a friend recorded a T.V. special for
me … ‘The World’s Ten Most Dangerous Snakes’ (in order to see
which of them I was familiar with she told me). Mambas topped
the list (all of the snakes in this account were on the list)
and I knew nine out of the ten, this fact deeply disturbs me,
even now.
I once found a Cobra in the junkyard behind our house, hiding
under the hood of a junked car. My tennis racket served me well,
but I never again went back to that very spot, certainly nearby,
but never exactly there. And there were other snakes, like the
nearly fluorescent green Boom Slang (Afrikaans for tree snake)
that I found in the vines outside my bedroom window. I went to
Dad and showed him where I saw the snake. While we looked for
it, it suddenly appeared across the lawn and went down a hole in
the ground. Dad told me to get some boiling water. Keenly aware
that the water wasn’t boiling quick enough, I remember so well …
I couldn’t wait for the boil ... I finally returned with the
boiling water and Dad poured it down the hole. “What if it has
another hole?” I asked. “The little bastard probably does,” he
replied.
1:
On the Move—December
2007
2:
Rain—January
2008
3:
Culture Shock—February
2008
4:
Lord of the Ridge and Fort Scorpion—March
2008
5:
Nightmares
and Snakes—April
2008
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