The minutes tuned into hours. The two combatants struggled and rested, intervals in-between bouts took longer and longer, ants joined in, crawling and biting, adding more pressure to an already exhausting battle. The snake, in one last effort, musters up the strength and gave a huge lunge forward, managing to drag the gecko and the small rock a couple of centimetres then lay quiet again.
Then suddenly, in a flash the gecko let go and made a mad scramble over the undergrowth in one direction, the snake sailed in the other and all who had gathered to witness the event, making a mad scramble of their own.
They were finally free.