John Godey - The Snake

Someone asked, "What part of Africa does this mamba come from?"

"It's distributed throughout most of Africa, coast to coast, except for the northernmost parts. Incidentally, it's misleading to call it just 'mamba.'

There are three different kinds of mambas-the black; green, which is found in savannah country and riverine forests and is exclusively arboreal; and Jameson's, which is a rain forest snake. All three are slender, with a small, coffin sided head and a prehensile tail."

"From the picture, how big do you judge our snake to be?"

"At least ten feet, maybe as much as eleven. It's a superb specimen."

The DI muttered impatiently. Converse looked at him questioningly, then went on.

"The black mamba has a legendary reputation in Africa. It's feared, respected, in fact it's held in awe, much as a tiger or lion might be. Some of the stories you hear about it are exaggerations, especially its speed on the ground. For example, there's a persistent claim that it can overtake a galloping horse."

"Can it?"

"It's unlikely. Estimates of its speed vary between seven and twenty miles per hour. MN guess would be about ten miles an hour."

One of the reporters sounded disappointed. "That's all?"

"It's a hell of a lot if you're crawling on your belly. It's undoubtedly the swiftest snake in the world. I saw a few black mambas in Africa when I was a student. I can tell you that it's a genuinely intimidating sight to see an irritated black mamba, racing across the ground with its head a foot and a half in the air and its mouth gaped wide open. A rabbit doing ten miles an hour is one thing. Being chased by an extremely venomous and aggressive snake at that speed is the stuff nightmares are made of."

The man who had made the joke about mamba being a dance made derisive sounds. Converse recognized the professional sceptic. Every audience he had ever addressed had one, varying only in degree of belligerency. Except for kids, of course. This one didn't look like a fire-eater-a thin gray-blond man wearing gold-rimmed eyeglasses.

The man spoke up. "Whether I could outrun your snake or not is beside the point. It's pure myth that snakes chase people."

"For the most part that's true," Converse said equably. "But some snakes-the king cobra or hamadryads, the black mamba, some others will sometimes take out after somebody, usually on their breeding grounds during the mating season, but often on other occasions when they're highly irritated. And if a black mamba was chasing you, sir, I'd bet on the snake."

The DI gave him a black look. Eastman cleared his throat, a sound of warning.

"You'd probably cheer the slimy thing on, too." The man's nondescript face had a capability for scowling.

"As most educated people know by now," Converse said mildly, "snakes aren't the least bit slimy, they're dry and rather pleasant to the touch."

The man screwed his features into an exaggerated expression of disgust.

"Slitheriness to one side, how do you feel about the fact that they poison people, sometimes fatally?"

"A great many more snakes are poisoned by man than the other way around.

Smokestacks, auto emissions, industrial wastes, insect control poisons-"

"Fine," the man said. "Exterminate them. They're not good for anything, anyway."

"Then how come man eats them, turns them into leather goods, exhibits them in zoos, exploits them in various forms of entertainment? If you're looking for a villain, blame the man who turned that black mamba. Loose in the park. He's the one to hate, not the snake."

The man waved his hand in a gesture of dismissal. Holly Markham stood up.

"Will it help you to find the snake now that you've identified it?"

Her question was to the point, and the assemblage, which had been tense during the exchange with the previous speaker, relaxed. Converse said, "It defines the problem without simplifying it. So far as its habits go, the black mamba is an all-purpose snake. Its arboreal part of the time-it likes to lie in the low branches of trees or even in bushes to take birds, and it may bask on a treetop, too, though, like most snakes, it likes a rock better. But most of the time it's terrestrial. It hides in bushes, in thickets, under rocks, in hollow trees, and very often in a well-concealed burrow."

After an interlude of note-taking, a TV reporter asked if the black mamba was as dangerous as a cobra.

"In my opinion, much more so. It's a lot more aggressive, and it doesn't have to go into a set striking posture before it bites. In fact, it can strike with extreme effectiveness in any direction while it's running at top speed. The cobra strikes inaccurately in daylight. The black mamba is equally deadly by day or night. Taking everything into account, I'm inclined to think it's the most dangerous snake in the world."

"You mean the most poisonous?"

"It's not the most poisonous, although two tiny drops are sufficient to kill a man in as little as twenty minutes." He paused. The DI was examining his fingernails with undisguised boredom. Eastman's expression was studiedly neutral. The rest of the audience seemed impressed. "There are three elements that make a snake dangerous: the potency of its venom, the position of its fangs, and its aggressiveness or disposition to bite.

The black mamba rates high on all counts."

Someone called out, "What do you mean by the position of the fangs?"

"Some species have fangs that are situated at the rear of the mouth. So it's harder for them to bite accurately and efficiently. The venom of the boor slang of Africa, for example, is terrifically potent, but because it's rear-fanged it doesn't deliver its venom as effectively as the black mamba, whose fangs are in the front, practically under the animal's nose."

A small man with a wisp of white hair asked what the most poisonous snake known was.

"The king cobra, the largest of all poisonous snakes, can kill in fifteen minutes. The Australian death adder and taipan, the Asiatic sawscaled viper, the South American cascabel-they're all about equal, and probably slightly more potent than the black mamba. But after a while, in highly venomous snakes, the exact degree of potency doesn't make much difference. They all kill, and kill very quickly if antivenin isn't ad ministered in a short time after the bite. Incidentally, the cobra and the black mamba are both of the family Elapidae, and are related. The black mamba also spreads a hood when it's irritated, but vertically rather than laterally as the cobra does, and nothing like as showy."

Holly spoke up, asking him to define aggressiveness more fully.

"In simplest terms, willingness to bite when threatened or irritated.

There are some deadly snakes which just won't bite at all, except for food. The green mamba, for example. In Africa, boys shinny up palm trees for coconuts even though the trees are swarming with green mambas. The greens just get out of the way. Sea snakes are among the most poisonous known to man, but when fishermen bring them in, in their nets, they just pick them up and throw them back into the water, and rarely seem to get bitten…"

The DI was stirring restlessly. Converse, warming to his subject, ignored him.

"There's a very poisonous snake called the blue-banded krait. It's absolutely deadly at night, but simply can't be made to bite during the daylight hours. Children play with them, manhandle them, in the villages.

People have been known to beat them with a stick, nail them to a board, subject them to torture-even to the point of death-without being bitten."

He paused for a flurry of note-taking, and observed that even the DI seemed mildly interested. Holly Markham was wearing a yellow silk blouse that went beautifully with her black hair. Big deal, black goes with yellow-so what?