Backyard Fauna Revisited

In response to a delightful post by Daring Young Mom, I dug up this old piece from Spring last year.


BackYard Fauna (circa Oct 06)

In the week that we lost Steve Irwin and Peter Brock, not to mention Colin (Sun on the Stubble, Stormboy) Thiele, we have discovered more indigenous wildlife in our back garden.

Some of the existing residents include the occasional kookaburra, two ducks who have taken to swimming in our pool, a sleepy lizard who lives somewhere around the pool and comes out to sun him/herself on the rocks regularly, Pippin our cat, the occasional neighbourhood dog and lots of spiders.

On Thursday afternoon however, Baby Angel spotted our latest inhabitant, a very lively baby brown snake. When Himself waved at it, it slithered off and disappeared down a hole behind the retaining wall. OOOOOOOOoooeeeeeeer.

He claims we will ring the Snake Doctor, but nothing has happened so far.

Of course being a baby there's bound to be at least a mum about. I am not quite sure how parental your average brown snake is...........hopefully not very !!!!!

Stay tuned for developments!

POST SCRIPT (Jan 06)

Yesterday Himself called to me from the garden at about 9.30am and was able to point out the little snake head sticking out from under the rock it had taken refuge in the day before. What to do? The Snake Helpline had recommended buying bird netting and stretching it loosely over the area, weighing the corners down with bricks and waiting until the snake came out and got tangled up in the netting. Too late. Here was the snake and we had no netting.

I might point out here that the snake which Themselves had described to me as about a metre long and 'big enough', was the smallest, sweetest looking little thing I have ever seen, well, for a poisonous reptile anyway. I had to use binoculars to see him from the back verandah and he was only hiding near the spa. (Near my newly weeded rockery actually...very discerning).

So we called the Snake Catcher and I settled down with binoculars to 'keep an eye on him' until she arrived. I sat on a deck chair for half an hour with my eyes fixed on the one spot! Do you know how uncomfortable that is? Especially with binoculars! Anyway, on a number of occasions 'he' tried to come out of his hole a bit more and I leapt to my feet causing him to withdraw again. The idea was to keep him where he was til she arrived. Interesting that I refer to him as a male eh?

Anyway, Debbie the Snake Catcher duly arrived, took one look and said 'Bugger, I'm not going to get him out of there'. Of course, because of the fenced in nature of pools here in Aus she had no other way to 'sneak up on him' and he was poised staring directly at us and the entrance to the pool enclosure. Thus followed a very frustrating 30 min where we willed him to emerge from his hole as Debbie sneaked ever closer in the blazing sun.

Of course, being male, he refused to co-operate. He would come out a bit, then go back a bit. He was under an overhang too which meant she couldn't pin him down with her pinny downer thing, from above. At one point he gave a bi-i-i-ig yawn which was really sweet actually and his little tongue was flicking in and out 'sniffing' us. Debbie got right up to the rock and it was looking good for a brief moment....then she moved and he was gone.

Next step, try flushing him out with water. I'm not sure how this lies with the current water restrictions but we filled his hole with water hoping to send him out the front. He did not emerge. Finally she jammed the hole's entrance with bird netting and left with instructions that we were to check the netting regularly and dispose of him 'as we liked' (off the record as brown snakes are protected) as there are millions of the buggers about!

I checked a number of times during the day and there was no sign of him although there were a large number of ants going into the hole. This morning there are no ants and no sign of him so I suspect he was either drowned or trapped and the ants got him. Apparently they do that!

During this fiasco I was amazed by the beauty of the little snake as he raised up and lay down, swayed, yawned and sniffed. As Debbie was blocking the hole I stood on the edge of the spa watching, casually picking up leaves from the surface. OMIGOD!!! Under one leaf was a huge wolf spider!!! It struggled upside down on the surface of the spa and I shrieked, stepped backwards and..........fell into the pool. The Snake Catcher killed the spider.
Amazing what freaks us out isn't it? The SC nearly wet herself as she walked past our Paper Wasp's nest on the way out!