More snake stories.

We live with snakes. They are a part of our lives & over the years we have acquired a few stories. When we moved into our house a snake moved in with us. He (?) is a good sized carpet snake , rather pretty, & he lives amongst the joists of the ceiling keeping rats & mice & other vermin at bay. We know he's there but very rarely see him. Unfortunately the ceiling is also where our t.v antenna lives, precariously balanced on a joist & delicately angled so as to pick up SBS, the only station that regularly supplies the sort of history/archaeology shows I like to watch. Every so often SBS becomes nothing more than black & white 'snow', which means our resident snake has bumped the antenna in his travels & the kids need to climb into the ceiling & realine everything. Normally this occurs without incident but having hoisted the twins through the man hole they reappeared a good deal faster than they'd gone up, white faced & shaking & refusing to deal with the antenna until I'd dealt with the snake. Out of curiosity I did poke my head up but that is as far as I got. Even seeing our snake was completely saited, bulging out of his skin & dozing happily in the warmest part of the ceiling was not inducement enough for me to actually try & move him!

At one point we had rather a run on snakes. I have no idea why this particular year so many snakes moved into the house but after the 2nd time a child on a night toilet run nearly stepped on a snake curled up in their dropped clothing there was a mass midnight exodus out of the downstairs bedrooms to the upstairs living area. ALL the kids bunked down together & the only thing that moved them back was discovering nowhere was safe. 'Mum', a wavering voice fluted down the stairs. I came up to find Dino lying rigidly in the top bunk, too afraid to move until someone else had checked to make sure the snake was really gone. It had crawled across him in the dark but brave boy that he was he had lain completely still until it was gone.

Given how prone our wildlife was on moving in with us it is perhaps not surprising that my male residents took to moving out. From the time they were about 8 there were tents pitched semi permanently in the next door paddock & the boys took to camping out. We used to joke we'd run out of space inside until rumour reached us that there were some people who actually believed the joke! I remember Jossie, my oldest boy, coming in one day looking a little agitated to say there was a snake & what should he do? I came out to look, decided it was one of our harmless varieties & told him to pick it up & carefully remove it to the bush proper, WHICH he proceeded to do! As the snake was lifted I glimpsed it's red underbelly & nearly died. It was either a large small eyed snake or a small red bellied black & either is highly poisonous! I shrieked & Joss threw that snake high & wide. I don't know which of us got the biggest shock.

Then there was the first day back camping after a long spell of bad weather. The boys had planned & planned this first night back under the stars. They had an enormous pile of firewood, bread all buttered, a mess of sausages & I'd been prevailed upon to provide marshmallows for toasting. I had heard nothing else for days so was mightly surprised to find Theo lugging all his bedding back inside before it had even got dark. 'I am not,' he stated with dignity,'sleeping with a snake.' I went to investigate this newest development to find our tabby cat, Bindi, pouncing all over the floor of the tent while my other two boys watched mesmerized as the floor wriggled & squirmed, jiggled & bumped & the cat became frantic. I rolled my eyes, told them to get a move on, pick up the tent & walk it away from the snake! No doubt it would be as relieved as they were. I took the cat. When you live cheek by jowl with wildlife you can't back off from every encounter but I didn't need her antics with a snake in the house.