When living outside Naivasha on the edge of the Rift Valley in a somewhat lonely and rugged place, we didn’t have too many wild animals, but we did have snakes. One morning Ezekiel, our mpishi and the chap who totally ran the household, rushed in to say Jezebel, one of our dogs, had been bitten by a nyoka. Hastily putting our baby daughter and Ayah plus the dogs into our old blue Vanguard, we drove off down the very bumpy track to Naivasha to take Jezebel to the Veterinary station. Driving perhaps too quickly through a flooded donga, the car stalled in the middle. With no one nearby to help, we got out and opened the bonnet. We removed the spark plugs one by one and dried them off with the only dry cloth we had – one of the baby’s nappies. By a miracle, the car started. We arrived at the Vet to find no one there. By now Jezebel was unconscious, the fang marks clearly visible on her lip. We took Jezebel to the District Hospital where the Matron, after a little hesitation, injected our dog near the heart. In a very short time Jezebel recovered. We returned home and found our workers, with great jubilation, had killed the six-foot-long puff adder that had bitten Jezebel.
Daphne Johnson, Hereford, UK
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