Dangerous Thief

When I was a child I was fascinated with snakes. It all began when I was nine years old, my brother and I found some ‘legless lizards’ in our backyard, under an old tree that had been cut down. There were a dozen or so, all about 30cm long.

We decided to keep them as pets, until one day Dad noticed what we were playing with and he almost had kittens over it. They were not legless lizards. In fact they were not lizards at all. No, they were baby dugites, a venomous, lethal native snake.

Dad’s main concern was the mother of these babies. Where was she? Somewhere under that fallen tree and here we were sticking our hands under the tree, digging around to find, what we thought were lizards.

My fascination for these creatures grew as I got older and as a teenager I would go looking for snakes whenever we were in the bush. This obviously led to some close calls.

When I was twelve years old and on our farm, Dad informed me he had seen a large dugite just down the track. So off I went to see if I could find it.

I saw the snake as it disappeared down a mouse burrow, so of course, I did the only sensible thing that any twelve year old would do. I poked and prodded the hole with a big stick, hoping the snake would come out.

What I was unaware off was a back door to this burrow, which the snake used to get away from my stick and slither around behind me.

Thankfully Dad turned up in the nick of time and shot the snake with his shotgun, blowing its head clean off. I picked the dead snake up, draped it around my shoulders and decided to take it home with me. Isn’t that what all pre-teen girls would do?

When I arrived home I threaded the snake through the creeper that covered the outdoor toilet and then promptly forgot about it. A couple of days later I heard Mum screaming in the backyard and raced outside to see what the issue was.

Mum was absolutely terrified and screaming for Dad to come outside as there was a large snake in sight. I laughed, raced over, grabbed the snake and started swinging it around, much to Mum’s horror. She wasn’t there when we killed the snake and she also didn’t know I had threaded it through the creeper. She was screaming at me to put it down.

I didn’t realise at the time that the dead snake had been flyblown and while I was swinging it around I was flicking maggots everywhere. Mum was not at all pleased with her meaty shower.

Fast forward a decade to when I lived in a small caravan in Western Australia’s far north. I shared my caravan with a reasonable size children’s python, my pet who had free range of the van. At night it would often slither up onto my bed and sleep with me.

Now fast forward again to when I was thirty five years of age, with my two young boys, living in a small town in far North Queensland.

We had recently been given a small snow white kitten that we called Snowy, of course.

It was the Tuesday after the Easter long weekend, 7am and as I was on holidays, I was asleep when I heard my oldest son scream. I flew out of bed, instantly awake. Somehow I knew that scream meant snake.

I raced to my son, thinking he had been bitten, but no that was not the case. It was Snowy that had been attacked.

There in front of my eyes was a seventeen foot Scrub Python, coiled around Snowy, with her head in its mouth. Not a nice sight and not one my eight year old child needed to see.

My partner was only seconds behind me and acted instantaneously by grabbing Snowy, wrestling her from the snake’s grip. After losing its meal, the snake struck out and bit my partner on the knee, before slithering off under the house.

Snowy was not breathing, so my partner performed mouth to mouth resuscitation and thankfully saved her. Meanwhile both my boys were watching all this play out and they were traumatised, worried for their kitten. Eight and six years of age, too young to understand what was really happening here.

After resuscitating Snowy, we all jumped in the car and I drove the thirty two kilometres to the nearest vet in record time. The boys in tears in the back seat.

I was very thankful when the vet told us Snowy was fine and only suffered a broken canine tooth. He explained Snowy had gone into shock after the snake grabbed her, thereby foregoing the need to be crushed when it coiled around her.

With the knowledge that Snowy was okay and the shock wearing off, we headed on home again. Both boys starting to settle down now their beloved pet was okay.

After we arrived home and the boys were out of earshot, my partner said, “now the snake knows Snowy is here, it will keep coming back until it makes a meal of her.”

I looked at him in horror and replied, “no it wouldn’t, would it? Surely with the small brain inside it’s head it would forget about Snowy, once she was far enough away it couldn’t smell her anymore.”

My partner explained, “that snake would have been stalking Snowy for days, watching and waiting for its chance. It would have watched until it learned Snowy’s favourite access point to go under the house, where it was nice and cool.”

“Really?” I asked.

Oh my god, that means the entire Easter weekend, when I had a houseful of guests, some of them children, this large snake had been stalking us. A snake that was big enough to swallow my youngest boy.

I was, understandably, a little freaked out.

That night, long after the boys had gone to sleep, I was standing in front of a window, holding Snowy in my arms. The window was open, but it was the only open window at the time. As I was concerned, I had closed all but this one window, which I planned to close before I went to bed.

It was midnight and I was standing there cradling Snowy while waiting for my partner. We were about to go to bed, but first he wanted to check around outside to ensure that the snake was nowhere to be seen.

Suddenly I heard him speaking to me through the open window. “Babe, shut the window now and enclose Snowy in the boys bedroom, making sure she can’t get out,” he said in a loud voice.

I quickly followed his instructions and once Snowy was safe, I joined him outside.

There he was on his hands and knees, shining the torch under the house, right below the window that I had just shut. I crouched down next to him and in the torch light I could see the same snake that attacked Snowy that morning.

My partner was right, the snake had come back looking for Snowy and there it was just under the window I had been standing in front of. We knew it had not been there long as it was glistening in the torch light, wet from the rain that had started about fifteen minutes earlier.

It had obviously smelt Snowy through the open window. Now I was totally freaked out. Would it have come in the window, after Snowy, while I was standing there?

That’s when I realised that this creature was pure evil and extremely cunning to boot. Nothing was going to stop it from coming after Snowy, time and time again. What if next time, it decided my six year old child was a decent meal?

I was horrified at the thought.

No, that evil snake had to go. I was severely traumatised by all these realisations running through my head.

My partner asked me to hold the torch on the snake, while he crawled under the house to capture it. The house was on stumps but there was only sufficient space to crawl around under there.

After handing me the torch he said, “whatever you do, do not let the snake out of the torch light because if you do, I won’t know if it turns to coil around me. If it does that, I won’t be able to escape its clutches, as this beast is pure muscle.”

Well that doesn’t put me under pressure now, does it?

I did manage to keep it in the torch light, while my partner grabbed the snake’s tail and it proceeded to drag my partner around under the house. How I did so has me beat!

Eventually my partner was able to drag this monster out from under the house and capture it safely, but it was a good hour or so that he wrestled this thing in such a confined space.

Now if you ask me if I still have a fascination or love for snakes, I will tell you in no uncertain terms, how evil and cunning these demons of the wild really are.

In fact, it was that very night that started my deep rooted hatred and fear of snakes and of course, over the next few years, I had so many confrontations with snakes, that my hatred was carved into the very essence of my Soul. But that’s another story altogether.

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Originally posted on Medium