I guess I've had my fair share of this sort of thing over the years. Probably the 'most interesting episodes have been a spitting cobra in the bathroom and another in the lounge, a python in the bedroom, and a green mamba that fell out of a tree and landed across my legs

......don't know who was the most frightened on that one. I've also had a few close encounters with black mambas, but so far, I've never been bitten........spat at a few times by the cobras, but as long as you wear eye protection of some kind and don't have any open wounds you're pretty safe.

I prefer to catch and release any I find in the house or camp if I can, but just occasionally you have no choice but to kill them and I find a Zulu asagaii is the best weapon. You just wait for them to rear up at you and then swing at them and the asagaii takes their head clean off

If it's a close encounter in the bush I always leave them alone......it's their home, not mine. So why should I hassle them.

An old buddy of mine claims he had a black mamba in an old (nt very) long drop toilet some years ago and in a moment of madness he decided to shoot a barrel of 12 gauge down the hole to kill it....... guess what he ended up covered with

Don't know if that ones true though. Capstick claimed to have done the same thing and this guy was also a buddy of Capstick.

I've never had any real close encounters with scorpions, but have been bitten on the finger a time or two by spiders......and that hurts like hell.

But don't be put off by any of the above.....I've been kicking round Africa for a quarter of a century and all my close encounters could probably be counted on one hand and certainly less than two hands