Snake in the grass

This is indeed sound advice.

One time on the banks of the Zambezi river I was sitting on a camp chair under a kigelia tree and got up to pour another cup of tea from the teapot gently warming itself by the campfire.

When I returned I almost sat on a boomslang.

This is not a good idea as this venomous snake injects a hemotoxin that disables the coagulation process in the blood occasioning death by internal and external bleeding.

What an arboreal species was doing falling out of the tree is anyone’s guess but obviously, boots would not have saved me.