What’s the weirdest things that you have ever found in your bed? For me, it’s the alive and very sleepy snake that I just found in our bed last night.
One phrase that everyone seemed to repeat when I told them about our plans to move to Australia was: ”Watch out for all of the deadly snakes and spiders”. Now, I grew up in a country that doesn’t really have any dangerous animal. I’m used to being able to walk around outside without even worrying about things such of wildlife. I was worried about the Australian wildlife before moving here after watching too many nature shows. Snakes and spiders have never scared me, but the fact that they can potentially kill me makes it a little scarier.
I didn’t see a single dangerous animal for the first 2 months, but during the last 6 weeks I have seen more wild eastern brown snakes than I can count, one red-belly black and one dead diamond python on the farm. Most of my farm mates have also been in direct contact with red-back spiders (falling on to them from the water pipes), but I haven’t seen a single one yet and yes, I’m jealous of my farm mates.
It was just one more type of snake that I wanted to see before we left the farm- The green tree snake. They are fast, well camouflaged and hide among the tree branches. I’m sure that we’ve been very close to several green snakes while working in the orchard, but we haven’t been able to see any.
One of the snakes must have sensed my wish though, because I got to see one last night! It was peacefully asleep in our bed, partly crawled up inside Vince’s pillowcase. I’ve been checking the bed every night since we arrived to the farm. Vince have always made fun of me for doing it and I’ve always claimed that ”it will come a day when you’re very happy that I’m checking the bed”. That day was yesterday!
It looked exactly like one of the fake plastic snakes that you can buy in the toy store. My first thought was that someone had put one of the plastic snakes under the pillow as a joke. I know that I would be extremely unlikely, but it felt more likely than it would be a real snake. It was a real green tree snake.
They are harmless, but it still made me wake up better than too many espresso shots. We quickly called over our landlord (macho outback-farmer and sort-of snake handler) who came over with gunboats, thick gloves and a shovel. The snake was maybe 30 cm long and as thick as a ordinary pencil. It managed to fight its way out of our landlords hands and hide inside our bedside table (but we didn’t know it at the time). He even ripped out some of the carpet, but we couldn’t find the snake anywhere so we eventually gave up. There’s a few cracks in our floor (it’s a old country house) where it could have escaped out from.
Seeing the snakes in their natural habitats have given me a much better understanding of them as a specie and I’m probably less uncomfortable of them than the average Australian. I have 100% respect for them, but I’m not scared. They might have the potential to kill a human, but the poison is way to valuable for them to waste on anything rather than: 1. Get food and a humans is completely useless in that perspective. 2. Self-defense, but you’ll be fine as long as you leave the snake alone. So you’ll basically be fine, as long as you respect the animal and leave it alone.