Oh, no!!! There’s a snake in my house!

My mom, dad and I were watching television in our lounge one summer evening. Ruth was in her room reading while Tofi was catching some of the big moths that were common at this time of the year. The insects were bugging all of us. Summer in the African bush isn’t always that great with all the insects and we had to keep swatting them away from us. And that’s not even counting the mosquitoes.

After a while Tofi came scurrying into the lounge, trying to wipe her face on all the furniture. We couldn’t understand why she was doing this until she came to me and I had a closer look. Her eyes were all misted up and full of liquid and we immediately realized that she had been spat in the eyes by a Mozambique Spiting Cobra. And as she hadn’t been outside for a while, it meant the snake was in the house.

We didn’t have time to worry about the snake though as we had to do something about Tofi’s eyes. We knew we had to wash them out, but we didn’t know what to use. My dad said water but my mom said milk. They were arguing about it but I was so worried about Tofi that I just decided that we were going to wash her eyes with both. Now that this was sorted we immediately got to work. We opened her eyes as much as we could and poured first water and then milk into her eyes. It didn’t seem to help much as Tofi was still irritated with them and kept whining and trying to wipe her eyes. We had tried our best though and now needed to find the snake.

We started searching Ruth’s room first because that’s where Tofi had come from. We turned the whole room upside down before lifting all the couches in the lounge to see if the snake wasn’t under any of them. We couldn’t find the snake and just settled down to watch TV while trying to comfort Tofi. We watched for another hour before Ruth and I decide to go to bed. My dad asked us for the television’s remote but we didn’t have it. So we started searching for it and turned the lounge upside down. We had nearly finished and I lifted the blanket off one of the couches and found more than I had bargained for – the Mozambique Spitting Cobra.

It raised its head and spat out at me, but thankfully missed. Ruth and mom got such a fright and ran out the room, leaving Dad to deal with the snake. I went and fetched the broom for him before we started the complicated process of getting rid of the snake. Mom wanted us to kill the thing but we hate killing any living thing and decided to try and usher it out. We tipped over the couch and then only saw how big the snake really was. It was close to one and a half meters long and a frightening thing. It started spitting at dad when he pushed it with the broom but he had sunglasses on that kept him from getting venom in his eyes.

We slowly eased the snake towards the sliding door. It didn’t make things easy for us by ducking between the furniture but we weren’t going to have it in our house and made sure that we might our eyes on it. After a few minutes we finally got it out and dad pushed it away from the house and into the bush where it disappeared in seconds.

It took Tofi’s eyes more than two weeks to get better, but she thankfully regained her sight completely. They have been spat in again since then but this time it only took three days to get better. And well, snakes have kept coming into our house but at least haven’t caused us two many problems. Dad just usually takes them out with braai tongs.

Tofi doesn't shy away from danger. Here she's looking for a monitor lizard.