Red Belly Black Snake

We have a family of Red Belly snakes down the paddock. Lots of humans around here like to kill these poor little buggers because they are poisonous. Black snakes are most welcome at the paddock. While they have poison, it’s pretty mild stuff for an Australian snake and should just send you for a bit of nice R&R in a hospital bed. People I know who have been bitten have been trying to handle or kill the snake. But I find them to be extremely timid – they bolt before I can get anywhere near them. They also eat other snakes, so if you have Black snakes, then your population of the more deadly variety tend to stay away. Bring on the Black snakes I say. Ban the Bandicoot.

Snakes Alive!

Frank the Carpet Python

Crikey! It’s warmed up and I can’t seem to step outside without tripping over a snake. The main species we get here are whip, tree, black and carpet. Occasionally we get brown and tiger snakes but I don’t hang around for a positive ID on those. Frank is our generic name for large Carpet Pythons that hang around the house. They are pretty harmless for humans but nice and deadly for rats and (unfortunately) chooks. I lost my last two chooks to a fat old python. They can also be a bit annoying around your pot plants.

Bloody Frank mucking up my Orchid

 Anyway, apart from chook loss, it’s handy to have a Python hanging around to tidy up the rodent population in an Eco-friendly, no mess manner. Frank has had family at the house paddock and raised a lovely bunch of baby snakes in recent years – so I guess there must be more than one Frank living here. Not sure – they all look the same to me.

Yellow Faced Whip Snake

About a year ago, the Responsible Adult started to tell me stories of seeing pink snakes around the vege patch. All sorts of snakes visit the paddock – pythons, tree snakes, black, brown, tiger, whip – and they are all welcome. Perhaps not the browns and tigers so much but generally I can outrun them. Anyway, I had never seen a pink snake so my immediate reaction was to check the Cognac (The Responsible Adult and her girlfriend have been known to knock back a few) But the Cognac levels were OK so I have been waiting to see these pink snakes.

As the weather starts to warm, so does the libido of male snakes. So as I was around the vege patch the other day, two “pink” snakes did the horizontal limbo. 

Yellow Faced Whip Snake

 After playing a fair bit of kiss-chasey, our lovers settled down to the business of making baby snakes which allowed plenty of time for a few happy snaps to mark the occasion. Getting a really good photo allowed me to positively identify these crazy kids as a particular type of whip snake that we haven’t had before. 

If you want to know more about these, go here:

 http://australianmuseum.net.au/Yellow-faced-Whip-Snake