Where Are They Now: The snakes from the entrance line for The Cobra
Thoughtless people kick around the phrase “time heals all wounds” in their own crude attempts at comfort. What they fail to recognise is that if the wound in question is the closing of an iconic yellow rollercoaster, the ride will not slowly reappear over time. The scar tissue we live with is not a newer, cooler rollercoaster, but a billboard promising an exciting new multipurpose development.
If I close my eyes I can still see the tunnelled queue that misled you as to how long the wait would actually be. I can still taste the damp in the air. I can remember staring down the snakes that were brave enough to show their faces. Surely all these reptiles were brain-damaged from the relentless glass tapping from impatient joyriders? You would eventually reach the platform where the dead-eyed Ratanga employees would jiggle your safety rig before liftoff. I can still feel every jolting click of the snail-paced incline, each one notching up my heart rate in anticipation. Then the drop. Something that was easily a hundred times more euphoric than any EDM drop that Fiction nightclub could ever offer me.
Back to the snakes at hand.
Clue number one was a memory of my friends and I minding our own business eating the overpriced hotdogs in the overly dramatic food court. With no warning, the PA system crackled on for an announcement that had the clarity of a WW1 radio transmission. If you could imagine what Steve Irvin would look like if he grew up in Edgemead, that’s who climbed up onto the central stage. He wasted no time in parading snakes across a modest stage as about 8 kids rushed up to be closer to the obvious danger.
The man’s faded t-shirt and chunky cargo shorts did not play into the set caricature I knew. There was no cowboy hat or novelty facial hair to outwardly indicate his snake obsession. He wasn’t a cast member of the ill-fated Ratanga-verse either. No attempt was made to mesh with the desperate-looking meerkats or that bizarre dog with a propeller for a nose.
From what I can recall, the performance was not so much educational as it was an opportunity for a grown man to show us how cool his snake collection was. Who was this reptile loving maverick? Where did his snakes come from? And, where did they go? This was the kick-off for my surprisingly short investigation.
South African snake handlers typically have names like Snake Bite Jones or Nuttie Nattie. They also come with scandalous headlines relating to toe amputations or being accused of smuggling animals across the Namibian border. This was not the case for our Ratanga-based gentleman.
His name is Martin Odd. According to Century City, he assisted in successfully relocating about 30 of the Ratanga Junction-based snakes to the Soetwater Environmental Education Centre in Kommetjie during May 2018. They are a non-profit organisation so if you are able to support their work you can find out how here.