He and his 65-year-old wife, Ilda, of Moreleta Park east of Pretoria, left the Biyamiti rest camp in the Kruger National Park on Friday. After several kilometres, Parratt felt something like an insect brush against his leg and foot and wiped it away.
As he did so again, he looked down and saw a snake next to his left foot. It looked like a Mozambique spitting cobra. Although he was rattled, he remained calm and told his wife they had a “passenger”.
“Fortunately I’m not the panicky type. My wife immediately put her feet up on the dashboard.” In Hazyview they stopped at a taxi rank but “I didn’t want to get out there and leave my car because I was scared it would be stolen”.
The couple then drove to a reptile park in Hazyview. They removed “everything that could move” from the car, but couldn’t find the snake. Ilda said the staff wanted them to leave the car and arrange other transport home, but her husband wouldn’t have it. An official at the reptile park gave them two rolls of stretch plaster. If the snake should strike, they could use it to make a tourniquet to prevent the poison from spreading.
Later on he once again noticed the snake near his foot. At that point he couldn’t stop because they were in a narrow mountain pass. “At Sabie we stopped, but couldn’t find the snake. About 15 km from Lydenburg the snake wound itself around my left leg and ankle. Its head came up to my knee. The traffic was heavy and it was raining hard, but I kept calm,” he said. Eventually snake expert, Hein Geldenhuys was called in. Geldenhuys caught the cobra. “All you could see was venom flying,” Parratt said.
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