Snakes Alive!

Part 1

Summer is approaching here in the Southern Hemisphere. Thoughts turn to iced teas and watermelon. Blue skies and beaches. Sunny days and... snakes.

I’ve lost count of the number of times I had encounters with snakes when I moved to the country. Usually, from a good healthy distance where I could observe without danger to them or myself.

But, I have been up close and personal. And I mean REAL personal.

Working on the land usually means a lack of public conveniences. So you either, go before you leave the farm shed, hang on til you get back or, “find some bushes” to hide behind.

On an early summer’s day, I was repairing a top wire in a fence on a remote part of the property I was working on.

The urge to pee couldn’t be ignored any longer and I headed across the paddock to a stand of trees nearby.

Relief turned to shock when I noticed to my left, less than half a metre away and cleverly camouflaged among the leaves, a snake!

I froze – in every sense of the word.

Here I was, squatting down with my overalls around my ankles, my backside as bare as the day I was born, staring right at a Dugite. A member of the highly venomous brown snake family.

There we were. Me transfixed on this dangerously beautiful creature, looking into his glassy dark eye, and he, seemingly fixed on my very close and exposed position.

My ability to hold an awkward pose in freeze mode, when the desire to stumble and run instead, was commendable to say the least. I've since learnt that the "freeze mode" is the best method to choose when one comes too close to a snake, it gives them the chance to move away without panic - a panicked snake is not a good thing!

Those few moments, indelibly etched into my mind, seemed like an hour. Upon realizing I posed no threat in coming closer and with a clear way out (thankfully), the snake slowly unfolded himself from his convoluted rest and glided swiftly through the brush and disappeared from sight.
I was trembling and strangely exhilarated - the adrenaline was pumping hard!

This encounter was to be the start of a healthy, inquisitive respect for reptiles. And, the knowledge that we represent far more danger to them than they do to us.

This was to be more than confirmed in the coming years.

Dugite

 image by quadrapop via Flickr

Unfortunately, back in those days, my chance encounters with snakes always happened when I didn't have my old camera. So unlike these days of the digital camera/iPhone.

And of course, they'd never be there when I'd double back and return to them.