A devoted dog saved his owner from what could have been a deadly snake bite when he noticed a black mamba lurking behind the couch, refusing to allow the human to sit.
Dogs’ senses are far more heightened than our own. Their sense of smell is 100,000 times more powerful than a human’s, and they can not only hear twice as well but can also pinpoint the exact location of each sound.
As such, when a dog is acting strange or attempting to warn you of something, it’s best to pay attention, even if you can’t sense the threat yourself – a lesson a man in South Africa almost learned the hard way when his dog refused to let him sit on the couch in their home.
For days, the man was bewildered by his dog’s actions. His beloved Rottweiler simply wouldn’t allow him to sit on their couch. Not only that, but the dog seemed angry at the furniture, barking at it every time he entered the room.
After two days of his Rottweiler shoving him away from the couch, the man finally had enough and began inspecting the couch for whatever was offending his pup. Shifting the couch away from the wall, he found the culprit and suddenly felt an immense sense of pride in his high-strung friend. Coiled behind the couch was a deadly black mamba.
How Venomous is the Black Mamba?
The black mamba is Africa’s deadliest snake. Like their Australian relative, the eastern brown, mambas are extremely skittish and fatally venomous – a lethal combination. Thankfully, antivenom does exist. Without quick and proper treatment, however, a single black mamba bite carries a fatality rate of 100 percent.
Because of this, the man nearly had a heart attack when his dog fearlessly charged the snake, attempting to kill it before it could harm his owner. Wrangling his dog away from the deadly snake, the owner immediately called Nick Evans, a professional snake catcher in the area, for assistance.
Upon his arrival, Evans quickly found the scaly intruder, lifting it from its hiding place behind the couch. According to the snake catcher, it stretched about 7 feet in length. Shockingly, however, it was far from the largest he’d ever encountered.
“The biggest I’ve seen was 3.05 meters (10 feet). They have been recorded to get a bit bigger, but not more than 4 meters (13 feet),” Evans told Newsweek. The reptile wrangler added that he was extremely impressed by both the dog and the owner. Each saved the other from the venomous black mamba.
“The way this gentleman reacted was exactly how one should react if a snake is encountered, and if you have dogs,” eh wrote in a subsequent Facebook post. “NEVER let your dog out to kill a snake for you. It often ends badly for the dog too. Unfortunately, dogs do usually find the snake before their owners, and many of the times it’s too late to do anything.”
“A happy ending for everyone!” he continued. “It was nice to see the love the family had for their dog, which clearly loved them back. Steering the owner away from danger…amazing.”