A Mozambique spitting cobra found itself between a wall and a hard place at a Hindu temple in Durban on Tuesday.
The cobra had slithered into the tiniest of crevices to avoid capture.
KwaZulu-Natal snake removal expert Jason Arnold was called out to retrieve the snake, but found it tricky to get any of his tools inside the crack in the wall.
Upon inspection, Arnold saw that the female cobra had tried to feast on a brown house snake and it seemed like it was still attached to it.
“The most difficult part about this was that I had no access to the snake, so I had to make the crevice bigger,” Arnold said.
The video Arnold recorded of the retrieval showed him using a hammer to knock out large chunks of the wall. In the end, he almost completely demolished it.
“I did give them [people of the temple] an option to leave the snake there and call me when it eventually comes out, but they wanted me to get it out,” he said.
He added that it took two and a half hours to get to the snake.
Arnold said they called the demolition a “blessing” as they have always wanted that particular wall to be removed.
After finally retrieving the cobra, Arnold placed it in a material bag along with the brown house snake that was later found dead. It had succumbed to the cobra’s venom.
“I figured instead of letting it go to waste, I may as well let the cobra have a meal.”
According to Arnold, it is natural for cobras to eat other snakes as part of their diet.
