We don’t know who Jess is, but we’ve got mad respect for her. The Hoedspruit Reptile Centre posted a video on its TikTok page of an employee (or volunteer) named Jess removing a black mamba snake from a home in South Africa. Black mambas are Africa’s deadliest snake, but Jess doesn’t flinch.
In fact, you’d think Jess was handling a harmless garter snake by the way she calmly handles the situation. In the minute-long video appropriately set to a Black Sabbath song, a woman approaches a snake crawling along the inside of a window sill in someone’s home. She grabs it with a grabber thingy you might use to snatch socks that fall behind the dryer.
The woman, who the caption identifies as Jess, then proceeds to restrain the black mamba snake by expertly pinching its head with its jaws locked open. Her fingers are centimeters away from those venomous fangs, but Jess seems fine. The mamba coils the rest of its body around her arm as she fumbles with a sack to put the snake in, but still, Jess seems fine.
Jess manages to get the snake safely in the sack, but it’s not as easy as it sounds. (Does that sound easy?)
Watch it unfold:
Don’t Mess With Black Mambas
In case you think we’re overreacting, an untreated bite from a black mamba has a 100% fatality rate. Anti-venom exists and usually saves the victim’s life, but that’s if you can get somewhere that has the anti-venom quickly enough.
Working at a reptile center in Africa has got to be full of surprises, so maybe you’d get used to situations like this. But we still can’t believe how calm this woman is as the highly venomous snake whips around her.
As the Hoedspruit Reptile Centre says in its Instagram post sharing the same video: “Jess! You’re a machine!”