Snakes

Tuesday 15th April 2008
Today Ian was painting just for a change, the Family room and Kitchen have been done and now he is doing the Boys rooms, Toilet, Bathroom and Laundry. All went well and because he is doing several small rooms instead of one big one he is a bit more enthusiastic again.
In the back garden we have a rather large corrugated iron shed that we have decided the kids can have as their play house, so Carolyn started clearing it out today, ably assisted by the kids and their new friend Lucas.
Carolyn had just started clearing it out and was pulling at an old piece of carpet when panic set in, a small creature a few inches long slithered out from underneath it. Being Brits and not used to this sort of behaviour she called on young Lucas for advice, he may be young but he has been brought up here and has been taught about these things. Lucas had a close look at it and decided it was nothing to worry about but just as he was turning away it started to slither away and he changed his mind, professing that this was in fact a Dugite (pronounced doo guy) which grows up to 2 metres long and is extremely venomous. Work stopped for the time being because if this was a baby one the chances are the mother was going to be close by and Carolyn didn’t want to meet her, so it was decided that we would call on our very own Crocodile Dundee (Keith from over the road) to give us advice. Keith was really interested in this snake because in the 12 years he had been living here he had only seen one snake in the area and that was a long time ago, nevertheless he was not taking any chances arriving armed with a pole and a Garden Rake.
Cautiously Keith pulled back the carpet and there was no sign of this vicious creature so he pulled the carpet out of the shed and then looked under the next bit of rubbish that was in the shed, slowly he worked his way through the shed clearing up as he went with Carolyn looking on. Eventually he found the “Snake” which turned out to be a Lizard with legs so short that you could barely see them, just to appease Carolyn he did say that because its legs are so short it does appear to slither. By that time the shed was virtually empty so he continued with clearing it out and when that was done he lifted some of the paving stones inside the shed and chopped out some tree roots that had started to make the floor uneven replacing them neatly as he went.
He then went on in great detail about the different types of snakes that are in the area and explained that the thing to do if you see one is to hit it on the back with a Rake, apparently this doesn’t kill it but it will break its back and slow it down, giving you a chance to run away.
Ian is going to the Hardware store next week to buy 5 Rakes just to make sure we don’t get caught by surprise, although we think we will have to make some special brackets so that we can fit them on the kids bikes to make it easy for them to carry.