Readers of these Ezine articles may be surprised that someone who knows almost nothing about reptiles would publish three articles on snakes, but on reflection it seems that life in Kumasi in the 1970s and 1980s was one long sentence punctuated by snakes. That is not to say that one was tripping over the wriggling substances every day, or emulating the Bouncing Nuns of Norwich, but that they were never far away. Our two species did their best to avoid each other, but inevitably early warning systems failed and close encounters became inevitable.
Living on the sprawling pastoral campus of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, the staff houses were effectively sealed off, but one was mindful of the green mambas in the garden trees. Fortunately, these creatures seemed to prefer to stay in the trees and were not included in the varieties of fauna that invaded our living space. The most dramatic of several domestic encounters involved a cobra*. This creature was found on a raised patio just outside the front door and inches from a cat flap through which it appeared to be about to enter the home, perhaps in pursuit of a kitten named Smokey.
Determining the entrance of the serpent involved taking up arms, but when confronted by a man with a large stick, he rose into the air, expanded his hood, opened his mouth wide, and spat. It is said that spitting cobras rarely miss the eyes of their assailant, but here is documentary evidence that, fortunately, they do occasionally miss. They move very fast, too, and before a second strike could be attempted, the snake swept past him, leaving a fleeting sense of wonder that his hood had completely deflated into the standard contours of an anatomy. elegant. The intruder slides off the edge of the narrow courtyard down 60 cm into his hole in the ground. Needless to say, access was soon effectively blocked, but there remained a furtive hope that the enemy who had fought so valiantly would have another way out of his lair, preferably away from the house.
Another battle waged against various snake species over several months involved the loss of Canada’s dairy cows. These animals were grazed on specially prepared pastures on the university campus with the long-term goal of crossing them with local N’dama cattle to produce an animal resistant to tropical diseases but generous in milk production. Unfortunately, the beautiful big black and white Friesian cows were denied to N’dama’s small brown bony bulls because they had little or no resistance to snake bites. Within a few weeks, eight or ten prize milkers had become victims of serpentine resistance to the invasion of their ancestral habitat, and researchers from the Department of Animal Husbandry were contemplating keeping the immigrants permanently detained in snake-proof housing.
Not only cows were victims of snake bites but also dogs. The loss of the stable keeper at the hands of a nocturnal viper has already been reported, despite the efforts of the university veterinarian. He suffered the same fate before the author’s own dog, Kwesi**, Smokey’s longtime companion, could be called to the vet, but this is a story too painful to tell in detail. If the other tales provided the commas and the settlers for the long life sentence in Kumasi, this tale should provide the full stop (period).
*Possibly Naja nigricollis for experts.
** Born on Sunday, with apologies to Ghanaians who may be offended that a dog has been given a human name.