On New Year’s Day I took the family out for an evening walk on the ranch. Along the verges, lush after rains, I urged our children, Eve and Rider, to help me collect specimens of different plants, or identify wildlife spoor or scat. I wore shorts and flip-flops. As usual I was talking too much to my wife Claire, when I was stunned into silence by Eve, who cried out loudly, as if the world was ending, and pointed at the ground in front of me. I froze. I had not looked where I was going and my right foot was about six inches from the head of a puff adder, fat and four-foot long. I recoiled and my herpetologist pals will be annoyed to hear that on an automatic impulse I killed the beautiful creature. Usually, I would never hurt a snake. I felt it was a matter of survival.
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