verging_on_random

Snakes

September 17, 2007 on 8:26 pm | In Uncategorized |

I like snakes. We get lots of them up here. Green tree snakes come climbing all over the place. They are the most self-disciplined animals imaginable. Once they realise they’re in the presence of a big dangerous animal like me they go into the camouflage position and hold it until the danger moves away. One stood with its head in the air pretending to be a bit of lemongrass for the best part of a day once. For all I know it’s still doing it.

Last summer I had a resident one of these out the back.

Hope s/he’s still around. The only unpleasantness between us was when I’d get home from work late at night and s/he’d be curled up on the doorstep. Still it was nice to have it around - cheaper than Ratsak.

Thinking about snakes got me to contemplating some of the great names people have given to the dangerous ones. Vipers, and cobras, and death adders, and mambas, and cottonmouths (eew) and copperheads.

So what evocative names did they come up with for the two venomous snakes that infest the east coast?

Well there’s black snakes.

And brown snakes.

Brilliant. Obviously named by a committee of public servants.

PS Sorry if the picture freaked anyone out. I used to write another blog a few years ago … I ran some snake pics once and two regular readers point blank refused to come back until I promised never again to have any remotely snakeish images on the site. Big sheilas.