A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Cemetry by Carl Muller

Author:Carl Muller [Muller; Carl]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789352140725
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2015-05-27T00:00:00+00:00

Seventy Millimetres Of Trouble

Bagged and bussed! These humans take the cake!

Am I not, then, a self-respecting snake?

Herbert Zilva called it Echis carinata. ‘It’s a viperine,’ he said, ‘and bad-tempered too. Thanks, anyway. I’ve been looking for a specimen. Never thought of the seashore.’*

He then tried to transfer said Echis into a glass and cement tank and was bitten. But he got the pale, russet serpent into the tank, secured it and gave me a look of dumb accusation. ‘Now look what you’ve done,’ he grumbled. ‘I’m going to be sick for days.’

‘You’re not going to die, are you?’ I asked faintly.

‘Worse,’ he snarled, ‘these snakes take the pith out of you. The poison is going to sap me. Go away. I’m going to put some ginger paste on this,’ indicating three fang marks on the inside of his wrist.

I didn’t go away. I was concerned, naturally. Herbie was a herpetologist. He studied snakes, collected them, did all manner of fearless things with them and accepted that they would, sooner or later, put the bite on him.

‘What do you feel?’ I asked.

It was like an electric shock, he said, racing from wrist to neck and all along the right side of his body. ‘Pulse is rapid,’ he muttered, smearing the bite with ginger paste. A few drops of blood had oozed out of the bite. I fussed behind him like a mother hen. The pain from the bite was getting worse and stung like billy-oh. In half an hour his hand had begun to swell. ‘There’s nothing you can do,’ he gritted. ‘I’m going to sit on that bench. I’m going to suffer. You happy?’

Assured for the fourth time that he was not going to die, I went home. Uneasily. Echis had moved with incredible speed. In the plastic bag it had coiled itself into a ball and kept writhing its body continuously. The sound of its pectinate scales grating against each other had turned the bus into a mobile ward in Bedlam. I thought of the irate conductor, the panicking passengers and of how we had been shooed off a long way from our destination, and chuckled.

‘You gave Herbie the snake?’ my wife asked.

‘Yes.’

‘He liked it?’

‘I think so. It bit him.’

‘Oh.’

It had been quite an evening. We, my wife and I, had gone for a stroll along the beach: the sort of thing married couples indulge in from time to time. Above the belt of yellow sand was a dingier stretch of white, gritty sand, carpeted with a leathery, butterfly-leaved creeper that spread as far as the eye could see. Nice evening. The wind had gentled and the waves were long, effortless ripples that seemed to seep out of the purpling reef and the gold red glow of a lowering sun. The sands were a hive of activity. Tiny crabs scuttled hither and thither while their hermit cousins waggled stubby legs out of shells like telegraphists morse-coding the limpets on the weed-strewn rocks. Gulls wheeled overhead, greedily seeking an evening meal.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.