Scary areas
I’ve so much to tell you, so much has been happening here… branding has begun (pretty much my favourite time of year, where I get to meet all our baby Brangus, and also the busiest) and I am completely knackered from preparing for it (cooking, baking, bed-making, book-working) and doing it (out all day, on my feet, working brain and a teeny bit of brawn).
I have branding pics for you, but not tonight.
Tonight I am sharing two photos taken on Friday… of ‘scary areas’ that are a natural everyday part of our world out here.
The first is something Dash found and fell in love with.
A paper-wasp nest. There were dozens at the old shelter near the yards we were working at – some inhabited, some not. Thankfully, the one he chose to ‘pluck’ was UNinhabited. It’s now at our back steps. Adding to the decor of the place. Ahem.
If you don’t think this looks dangerous, you don’t know my brother. He has a little allergy. Never seen anyone attract wasps like that bloke does!
The second Scary Area is this.
An old gate.
An old gate leading into yards with VERY long grass. As I entered the yards through this very gate, I pondered to myself: Gosh this would be the PERFECT spot for snakes, in this long grass.
Then I chatted to my husband and kids, who were just dismounting from their steeds to have some refreshments (aka smoko). Then I turned to walk the five or six steps back to this gate. Then I hesitated at the sight of a stick I didn’t recall seeing earlier. Then, as it dawned on me what it might ACTUALLY be, I did something weird…
I stepped CLOSER to the stick to check to see if I was right. Like within a metre, kinda ‘closer’.
And I was right. (Sometimes I really HATE it when I am right).
The coppery-brown curvy stick MOVED and slithered into the long grass.
And I stopped breathing for a bit. THEN I stepped back.
Of course, there was nothing there for the others to see when their attention was focussed by my frantically gesticulating arms and madly mouthing gasping pleas to NOT WALK THERE.
We had to, of course.
It was the only way out of the yards. And the grass was longer everywhere else.
Funny how everyone insisted on walking behind me…
I am pretty sure my slithery stick was an Eastern Brown. Don’t read that link if snakes freak you out … I sure wish I hadn’t.
Snakes like this dude, I can tolerate. Even welcome (especially when they clean up my rodent problem, as Monty seems to be doing at present). But those ‘2nd most venomous terrestrial’ dudes.
No thanks.
Any close encounters of the freaky kind you’d care to share.
Make me feel better.
Please?
🙂
BB
15 Comments
Mummaducka
yep, we’ve had a few snakes in the last few days. I blasted the back verandah a few days ago when a black snake was in a teeny tiny hole after attacking my dogs. I have a dog that is enjoying killing them I fear, as we have found 2 little ones and one big one all chomped up on the back lawn. Kill them all I say, I don’t see the point in these venemous creatures, Give me an owl of kookaburra any day to kill the rodents.
Mummaducka´s last blog post ..Sunsets
Bill
Just think… if it was discovered that the brown snake can be used to cure cancer, you would never be able to find one.
Gretchen in KS
I have a dog who seems to really enjoy destroying snakes. I don’t happen to know if she was ever bitten, so I have no idea if she became this way in revenge, or was simply “born this way.” She’s actually my second “snake dog” here on our little funny farm. Lucky for us, we merely have to watch out for rattlesnakes, copperheads, and water moccasins. None of which are a patch on the venomous “sticks” you grow in your corner of the world. Ironically, the black and king snakes we’ve had are more trouble to us… they seem to love chicken. 😉
Carol/Red Dirt In My Soul
Thankfully the snow’s too deep here for snakes! We have rattlesnakes on our place, and I’ve run across them more than once. One bit one of my dogs, his head swelled horribly but he lived. Literally stepped over a bull snake coming out my front door, they’re not poisonous, and they eat mice but I was not happy nevertheless!
Carol/Red Dirt In My Soul´s last blog post ..Minute Movie : "Big Country"
Leenie
Even when we know they aren’t wicked; being surprised by snakes scare us. It seems we are born that way.
Emily Dickenson said it better,
“But never met this fellow,
Attended or alone,
Without a tighter breathing,
And zero at the bone.”
Leenie´s last blog post ..PISCATORIAL WATERCOLORS
jeanie
I remember visiting some friends of friends once who said not to mind their pet black snake on the walk to the pit stop – I did hold on for the whole visit I believe!!
Interesting fact is that the blacks are not attack snakes – there have been no known deaths by black snake bite (or so it was reported to me) and as their favourite snack is baby brown snakes, so best to let them.
As for the paper wasp nest – we have a lovely display on the eaves JUST where you can’t reach them. I can stamp away snakes no problem, wasps I am far more leery of.
jeanie´s last blog post ..Countdown
Jayne
Make you feel better?!
Seriously, woman, that is the sort of thing I’d do – step closer to have a gander (actually when I suprised a brown-coloured snake sunning itself in the backyard barely 2 feet away from where I was hanging out the clothes I did step closer).
And our neighbours took great pleasure in telling us once how the Tiger snakes were chasing them across the paddock cos they’d disturbed their nest.
Wasps?! Hair spray and a cigarette lighter make a great flame gun!
Jayne´s last blog post ..Be careful where your brain takes you on dark nights…..
debby
What a perfectly good waste of links…cause I ain’t clicking on ’em. And when I get me to Oz, you can bet your bippy that I am walking behind you, too.
debby´s last blog post ..Decision
Hippomanic Jen
I couldn’t help but be reminded of this song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNEeq5qGh8I
Fleur McDonald
This little incident had me wearing boots in my office for ages! http://fleurmcdonald.com/theres-a-snake-in-the-house/
Fleur McDonald´s last blog post ..Australian Year of the Farmer – A Farmer’s Story – No. 3
Margie from the New York
Ooooo scary, not too many scary things here in general, copperheads rarely and rattle snakes father north. Deer ticks they are scary, Lyme disease and all that, but not in the winter. The only thing interesting this morning, when I went out to drive to work, there were little opossum tracks in the snow. They have cute little toes so you can tell what made the tracks. That’s the only thing cute about them though.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opossum
JENNY TALIA
Never saw a snake in my life, ’til I moved (from Australia) to Nashville. Cotton-mouth bit me on my sandal – I still have the sandal, with the fang marks.
It was my lucky day. Lucky I had some kind of shoes on, and lucky I didn’t **** myself!
xx
JENNY TALIA´s last blog post ..hit pic, january 17, twenty twelve
Audrey
Thank you, thank you, thank you!! I can handle reading about the ‘stick’ but so glad there was no photographic evidence! 🙂
There is good reason that I live where I live.
Scariest thing around here is that the weather forecast for tomorrow morning is calling for -42C windchill. That’s dang cold, but WAAAYYY better than ‘sticks’ that move on their own!
Sharon
not sure that this will make you feel better, as my then 7 year old daughter was bitten by a baby brown just over two years ago…made her just a wee bit ill and got her a night and day in intensive care (but she was in very good condition compared some others there!) since then I have 1. kept the cat population up, they have done a very good job, although have lost two to suspected snake bites and 2. bought one of those Snake Deter things from the hardware which seems to be working really well, as touch wood, we haven’t seen a snake around the house since installing it.
I don’t mind a big ole black headed python however my problem is that in the dark they all look the same!
Bee Man Dan
I’m so petrified of snakes!