The gaboon adder is, except for the mamba, Africa's most venomous snake.

Then, armed with the digging-stick and claspknife, she returned to the carcass of the gaboon adder.

Eastern Green Mamba, Forest Cobra and Gaboon Adder.

This snake's common names include Gaboon viper, cassava snake, butterfly adder, forest puff adder, swampjack, Gaboon adder, and Gabon viper.

It struck the gaboon adder on the point of its snout and split its skull with such force that jets of blood spurted from the nostrils and the grotesque head was whipped over backwards.

It must be one of the more deadly species, one of the mambas, slim and glittering with their thin grinning lips, or a forest cobra, black as death, or one of the thick repulsive gaboon adders.

One had stepped on something that looked like a pile of dried leaves, but which had transformed itself instantly into six feet of infuriated gaboon adder, thick as a man's calf, with a repulsively beautiful diamond-patterned back, and a head the size of a man's fist.