Bush Life

I love living in the Australian bush.  I love the wallabies and bandicoots in the garden and I consider it an honour to share our veggie patch with them.  (That's not quite what my husband considers it, he's the one who does the planting and finally put up the wire fence.)  I love being woken at dawn by the raucous cackle of the kookaburras, the whooo-ip of the whip birds and the dozen or so other bird cries.  I love the bright green king parrots with their red heads, who love our fruit trees and I love the sound of the fruit bats screeching and squabbling in the flowering gums.  And now that we have the water filter we no longer have to worry about the bat poo that gets washed from the roof into the water tank.  

I love the possums and gliders that crash about in our trees after sundown and wee on the roof so you think it's raining when it's not.  I love the eerie wail of the stone curlew and the constant kirk kirk of the cicadas in the summer.  (My parents, from London, who live with the constant din of traffic, aeroplanes and rumbling trains found it too noisy to sleep on their first night here.)  I love the vibrant green tree frogs that crouch under the laundry ceiling, block the spout of the watering can and sound like an intruder as they hop along the verandah - the regular, measured thump as they land from each leap sounding just like a footstep.  Many a night we've leapt out of bed with a torch, ready to confront somebody only to find the verandah mysteriously empty.

I love the seven varieties of snake on our property, especially the pythons.  They eat the rats and leave long ghostly skins hanging from the verandah rafters.  The children love to watch the 'python snakes' as they slowly and gracefully make their way along the rafters, languidly waving their heads about as they try to find a way down to the ground.  One young snake made it as far as a hanging plant but then was evidently perplexed.  It slowly lowered its head and body in a straight line towards the ground, holding on with its tail to keep from falling, only to find that the distance was too far.  In the end I propped a broom up against the pot so it could coil down the handle.  And what a treat it was when, brushing our teeth one night we were startled by the sight of a python on the bathroom window sill, just on the outside of the mosquito screen.  We don't often get to see them that close up. 

They're not so popular with our European visitors though.  I remember when my son Ahren was a few weeks' old and a large python ate the neighbour's cat.  My mum was almost hysterical when I told her.  "It'll eat the baby!" she shrieked.  I tried to reassure her.  I reminded her about the millions of Australians who had grown up in the bush without being eaten by pythons as babies.  I told her about my midwife, Jillian, who used to live in the Daintree Rainforest and had a green tree snake (non venomous) living on her showerhead, a frog in the toilet and a python under the bed which she shared with her 18 month old baby.  I told her the story from "Stradbroke Dreamtime" by Oodgeroo, of when the author's mother was horrified to discover her husband's pet carpet python in the cot with her new baby.  When she screamed "It was going to eat the baby" he replied "Don't be stupid woman.  Why would it want your baby when it can have your chooks any time it likes?"  Oddly enough, none of these stories reassured her.  What seemed to upset her most was that we couldn't leave the baby outside in the pram to air, not a thing we would do anyway because - 1. the Australian sun is too strong for a baby and, 2. we didn't have a pram.  She could only finally say "it's a different world." 

Well, one day recently I was making some toast.  I put the bread in the toaster and pushed the lever down, or tried to, it wouldn't go all the way down.  I pushed and pushed but it felt stuck.  Then suddenly a coil, like a mini Loch Ness monster, appeared over the top of the toaster and then disappeared.  I leapt back with a little squeal.

"What's wrong?" asked my daughter.

"There's something in the toaster," I said "and I don't know what it is but I think it's alive."

I crept gingerly back to the toaster.  Was it a mouse, was it a lizard, both of which are well-known inhabitants of our kitchen (again to the horror of our city relatives)?  Or was it, as it had looked, a snake?  I peered carefully over the edge.  Sure enough, a thin brown snake was coiled up, under the bread, on the bottom of the toaster.

"Bugger."  I thought.  "Why do things always happen when Juergen's not here?"  Juergen is my husband.  He has a passionate love for anything long and slithery and is a trained snake catcher.  He it was that our neighbours called when the python ate their cat and when they found a young python in their bathroom sink.  And it was he that our other neighbours called when they found a large python with an extremely suspicious bulge curled up in their guinea pig hutch, sadly now devoid of guinea pigs.  That one was so heavy he could only carry it a few hundred metres away.  You can only relocate pythons temporarily, they're extremely territorial and always find their way home again unless you take them miles away.   

So, I was looking at a snake in a toaster and my snake-mad husband was not there.  What could I do?  I couldn't even 'phone him.  He's a nursing student and was doing a day of clinical practise at the local hospital.  I could imagine the disapproving stares as his mobile trilled and the apologetic explanation, "It's just my wife, there's a snake in the toaster."  I had to laugh at the image. 

The most important thing was to identify the snake.  If it was poisonous I was staying well clear of it.  On the other hand, I wasn't too happy about giving a poisonous snake the run of the house should it decide to leave the toaster before Juergen came home.  I found the snake guide and, after a long scrutiny, identified it as a brown tree snake, commonly known as a night tiger.  That was a relief.  Night tigers are mildly venomous, the sting causing localised swelling at most.  I could cope with that, but I still did not want to carry the toaster in case the snake tried to get out while I was holding it.  So I put the toaster in a box and carried the box out to the verandah.  Then I carefully retrieved the bread.  Now we could see the snake clearly.  It was looped in 3 long coils all along the bottom of the toaster.  Poor thing, it had surely got a worse shock than me, being almost toasted.  I hoped I hadn't hurt it when I squashed it with the bread cage.  The children came out to get a good look at it.  They were sorry for the poor thing too.  They checked on it periodically throughout the day and it hadn't moved.  I hoped it wasn't dead but night tigers are night active so it was probably just waiting until dark.  Sure enough, next morning it was gone and we could make toast again. 

When Juergen told his fellow nurses, who live in town, they were totally horrified, but when I told the neighbours they just laughed and said "Yes, night tigers do like to come inside."

I love living in the Australian bush.