Ssssssoooo Good to Ssssssee You!

"Slippin' and a-slidin', peepin' and a-hidin', "
"Been told a long time ago-ho-ho-oh-woh."

I guess when Buddy Holly sang his cover of this famous Little Richard hit, way back in 1956, he was thinking of Linda of "solid sender" fame, hoping she'd "better surrender". I'll give 50 to 1 that slippery serpents were far from his mind.

They were also far from my mind when I came home after dark one night, parked the car in front of the house, got out to open the garage roller door and woa..... there lay a 2 m (6 ft) carpet python displayed 'centre stage' in my headlights, curled up across the bottom plate of the door and the driveway concrete.  

When I gained some degree of composure again, after my initial backward leap, I saw that he was quite settled sitting on the warm concrete and, surprisingly, didn't appear stage shy at all, quite un-inclined to move out of the limelight and happy to be the centre of my attention.

I knew of course that he wasn't poisonous, but snakes can carry disease, and a bite can be quite infectious, not to mention painful, particularly from a large fella like this one. I grabbed my phone from the car and called the local snake catcher. No heroics here - leave it to the expert! 

I had a while to wait before geoff@snakecatcher.com rolled up, and so I called the wife to assist me while I moved the car, hoping she would hold the torch on ol' mate, so I could reverse back down the driveway a bit and give the snake man some room to move. Also, I didn't want ol' mate to slip and slide into somewhere irretrievable.

Perhaps I should have been more explicit when I called out "Heh, hon, come and see this"? She came ambling down the front steps towards the garage door to see what I had displayed in the torch light, when, quicker than a gecko catching a fly, she was back at the front door again. Although no words were said, the implication was clear - "No way, Jose. You're on your own!!!!!"

So 45 minutes later Geoff rolled up and ol' mate hadn't moved at all in the mean time. Quite deliberately and carefully, ol' mate was coaxed from semi-coiled to linear mode, with the assistance of a steel handling tool, and seemed quite happy to slip into a warm hessian sack. You wouldn't get me into one of those dark smelly things, particularly after being stretched out, held down by my neck, then lifted unceremoniously by the tail, or in my case, the feet! 

Geoff suggested that 'Monty's' passiveness (I had decided to call him 'Monty' as I am a great fan of John Cleese, Michael Palin et al, of "Monty Python's Flying Circus" fame) was due to a slight bulge in his midrift, perhaps suggesting he was well fed. Needless to say I had already checked the bird cage and found our pet cockatiel still in residence, rather than having been on Monty's menu as a KFC (Kentucky fried cockatiel) snack.

So all's well that ends well. Monty python having been moved onto some greener pasture and me being some $300 lighter in the pocket.

The moral to this story is, clearly, leave the handling of potentially dangerous wildlife to the professionals. After all, we have some of the most poisonous creatures on the planet here in Oz, and it isn't always easy to identify which ones are dangerous and which less so.

One of the most dangerous animals found, not only here in Oz, but world-wide, is the "one-eyed trouser snake". So, ladies, give that one a wide berth also!  😈