SNAKE!

In less than a week we had a black snake (red belly) and a brown snake come to visit. What am I saying - they live with us! The black snake first appeared in the tool room next to the shed. The next time it appeared in amazing circumstances: we were sitting on the front verandah at dusk talking about snakes with a person who was a bit psychic. And I mentioned the local furphy that there were bluebellied blacksnakes down by the river and wondered out loud if they were a totem for the original owners of the land when a black 'shadow' seemed to run along the top of the fence in front of us, and at the same instant I looked down and at my feet (I was sitting on the steps) a black snake was trying to force its way into a small crevice between the stpes and the house. We all jumped up and ran inside, but our visitor's black labrador was attacking the snake, so I ran out and grabbed the dog and pulled it away. But by this time the snake was gone, presumably under the house. Did we see it? What did it mean? Daniel tells me he confronted it coming upthe footpath leading to the house one night. SO the latest sighting is a couple of weeks ago, in the above photo. It made its lesiurely way out fromunder Daniel's cottage, out under his car and into the grass beside the stables.

Then within days we have a visit from the big brown snake that also inhabits where we inhabit. The first time I heard of him/her/it, our manager said he had seen a "king brown" in the shearing shed and he wasn't going in there again. ("Anything to get out of work," I thought. But then I saw the snake's slide marks in the sand leading down towards the stables. On another occasion - during one of our droughts - I came across it crossing the road going towards the river. ANd the last time I saw it, I was reaching down to pick up some star pickets from in the grass and through the fence I saw in a small window between the grass a snake's skin pattern moving slowly along. It was brown. The latest visit came when we were out in the vege garden, digging out the weeds. It was detected by your Connor Grealish who drove over it on a quad bik and raised the alarm. Daniel coaxed it out of the grass and chased it up to the stables. (Ironically Daniel had a statement of the incidence of the high percentage of people who had died from snake bite whwile trying to kill the snake.)
I ran in to get the camera but it was all over. However I found it had shed part of its skin while escaping. It was two and a half meters long. Snake Info: Brown snakes are deadly. Aggressive. Territorial. Black snakes are less aggressive and are said to keep brown snakes away. Ours is a lazy bludger in that regard. Never try to kill a snake. If you find yourslef close to on, stop dead still. They are blind and rely on movement to target their prey. Stand still unless you can levitate at the speed of sound. Like I do. By the way, snakes have a job to do in the natural world. Don't kill them. Just be careful. Real careful.