Tamara found a snake at our front door. A little brown snake with a pale belly. Heikki had a closer look at it, picking the snake up and sticking his face right in. The snake had probably been injured by one of our dogs, and was not in a fit state to harm Heikki. Good to know one of the dogs can keep us safe from the attack of ferocious snakes.
But what was the snake? There are lots of snakes in Southern Africa. We have a thick book Snakes of South Africa which would hopefully help us with identification.
We started flicking the book. Very dangerous and dangerous adders and vipers came first, but the snake was not one of them. Then came the mambas, cobras and their relatives. It's not that I would really want to have one of them on the doorstep, but would have been exciting. Flicking through the pages, we were now in back-fanged and other venomous snakes. The body shape started resembling Tamara's find. Very dangerous, dangerous or mildly venomous. Most of these snakes are not found in our region.
We were now far into the book. We had reached fangless and non-venomous snakes. Just one dangerous snake in this category: the southern african python. All others are harmless. Was our visitor a brown house snake - a good snake for a pet? Difficult to tell with the coloring, as it can vary quite a lot. Finding one of these snakes would be quite exciting. Matias would like to have a pet snake. Even if they are harmless to humans, there's something scary about snakes who prey on innocent little fluffy mice. And no it wasn't Tamara's find, the eyes were all wrong.
We were fast approaching the final chapter of the book: Blind and worm snakes. Harmless little things that resembled worms. But just before reaching that far we found our snake. The common slug-eater. Danger to man: None. Preys on snails and slugs.
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