[gargoyle]

...Thanks for the post. Some thoughts about multiple bites. Why would the mamba bite so many? Not for food, but, biting victims as they came to find other victims. Instead of the death penalty, Life in prizoo. Who was his attorney???

[Barlowmaker]

The scientific/medical community try to capture the snakes when they can in order to develop anivenins. Mambas are quick getaway artists as a rule (they can scurry at up to 15 mph). And, I don't know when these events occured, but I assume it was sometime early last century. But apparently they had the hospital/morgue records that authenticated the Rhodesian event.

But, like I said, the locals prefer to blast away. My buddy told me that some local villagers chased a mamba into a tree and basically unloaded multiple shotgun rounds into the branches to kill the critter. They knocked down all the branches, but didn't get the snake. They cowered in fear for days because they thought the snake was going to come after them for revenge. That's the mystique of that particular animal to the residents of the South of Africa.

I've lost touch with my friend (he's one of those "visiting" professor types who is always on the move) but he spent a couple years down in the jungles of Honduras, Panama and Costa Rica in the early 90s and never came across a Bushmaster and only a few Fer-de-lance specimens. Sounds like their evolving habitat is in pretty bad shape.