Library of Cryptozoology

"Abdullah, my father, killed the snake and saw its cock's comb. Truly he was a brave man, my father. Often he would tell the tale of how he passed along the path frequented by this terrible snake, with a bowl of steaming porridge on his head: how the snake had suddenly shot its great head out of its hole, high up in a dead tree, and had struck at his head: how the jaws plunged into the scalding porridge and the snake dropped onto the path, writhing and twisting in its last death agony."

There have been, over a term of years, many reports of a snake that has a red comb and wattles like a cock, some of the narrators adding for good measure that it crows like a rooster, that bane of all drowsy suburbanites. As far a we can gather the story originated in Angola, spreading into South West Africa, and Rhodesia. A good account was sent to use from Southern Rhodesia. Our informant [Dennis A. Walker], when showing to one of his African boys some pictures of snakes, was asked if he had a picture of "the snake with the cock's comb and wattles". When he denied the existence of such a creature, the boy related that one day when hunting in the M'toko range, his dogs surrounded a small tree in which he saw a huge snake, which slid to the ground and raised the fore part of its body after the manner of a cobra, to a height of about six feet. Not surprisingly, he turned and ran, but not before he had seen that the snake's head was adorned with a red comb and wattl...

There is an undiscovered antelope in these parts; also an animal which from its description and horns I conceive to be the Indian bison. It is named in Serotse Liombikala. Large horns like an ox. Gondi, short horns–burrows. Bumé or Boomy, one horned animal, probably a variety of Rhinoceros. ... Few die under this treatment [of suction and an emetic] unless bitten by the Mokhoapa, a black snake or a little yellow basilisk .

We have heard little recently of the crowing crested cobra but in the 1930's and early 1940 there was much correspondence about this strange Northern Rhodesia creature in the Journal East Africa and Rhodesia . The correspondence seems to have ended with a note concerning an inquest which was held in 1940 at Namwala on a native who had died from snake bite. The oldest inhabitant insisted that the snake was a "Nyukanga" described as a reptile 300 [30?] feet from head to tail, with a red gullet, and which crowed like a cock. It lived in trees. It is rumoured that the District Commissioner returned a verdict of "Death from Supernatural Causes".

The chief facts about the "mamba" are these: it deliberately pursues and attacks man, lying in wait for him; its bite is most deadly, and in a very few hours its victim is dead. It is about twelve feet long, and has a kind of crest like a cock's comb on its head; it also makes a noise resembling the crowing of a cock; it haunts rocks, and is also found in the forest. If one is ever met with near one of the paths, that path is at once deserted, and with no undue reason, for this snake is known to oppose whole caravans, killing, one after another, all who attempt to pass by the tree or other position where it may have for the time taken up its quarters. This "mamba" is by no means uncommon about here, and the hill near where Mr. Porter's house stands is its favourite haunt.

Susi, to whom this snake [the mamba] is known in the Shupanga tongue as "Bubu," describes it as about twelve feet long, dark in colour, of a dirty blue under the belly, with red markings like the wattles of a cock on the head. The Arabs go so far as to say that it is known to oppose the passage of a caravan at times. Twisting its tail round a branch, it will strike one man after another in the head with fatal certainty. Their remedy is to fill a pot with boiling water, which is put on the head and carried under the tree! The snake dashes his head into this and is killed—the story is given for what it is worth. It would seem that at Ujiji the natives, as in other places, cannot bear to have snakes killed. The "Chatu," a species of python, is common, and, from being highly favoured, becomes so tame as to enter houses at night. A little meal is placed on the stool, which the uncanny visitor laps up, and then takes its departure—the men significantly say they never saw ...

I moved us into a smaller, pleasanter house in the [Shire Highlands] foothills, about 300 feet above the river, and it was here that Madamat met the nsongwe – the "crowing, crested cobra" which no white man has ever seen. Madamat was walking up one night to keep guard on the verandah, when the snake crossed his path. He arrived looking paler than I have ever seen any African – and shaking. It had, he said, a "red hat" (comb) and crowed like a cockerel! Next day, he took me to see the place where it had appeared. There were marks on the sand and a branch was broken in the tree into which it had vanished. Note : This story is told by Betty Matthews, who lived in Nyasaland in the late 1940s.