The year started off with an unfriendly visitor in the Carstens home who made itself comfortable behind their jacuzzi.
In what was a scorching weekend for the Boland, the Carstens family found the fifth Cape Cobra in their home in Keurfontein, near Goudini Spa on Saturday 8 January.
According to Tommie Carstens, the highly venomous reptile must have slid into the house between 06:00 and 07:00 that morning through their front door and moved around the house until the next day.
“I had opened and left the front door open for my dog to run around for an hour and I am convinced that he (the snake) came in during that time.”
He further shares that they noticed that their cats were stationed in front of their fridge from the morning to the afternoon and refused to move an inch and that is how he noticed that something was wrong.
Carstens tells Standard that he took his torch and looked under the fridge where he saw their uninvited guest.
“I called the farm manager to help me catch the snake but it escaped into our storage room before the farm manager arrived.”
Apart from being an uninvited guest, it was also a rather aggressive one, as it could be heard blowing about six meters away from the hole it disappeared to.
An entire day passed and it was now Sunday (9 January) and there was still no sign of the snake, only his loud blows were audible.
“I looked for the snake again and as I was looking for it, his blows were quite nearby and I immediately assumed that it must be hiding behind the jacuzzi.”
Carstens then contacted André du Preez, who arrived on their farm within 15 minutes to rescue the snake.
“I must commend him for his reaction time especially taking into consideration that we live outside of Worcester.”
According to Carstens, in the past four years, there have been five Cape Cobra’s in their home.
“We even found one underneath my bed two years ago.”
Again, it was his cats who alerted him when they watched the underneath of the bed like hawks.
