Snakes? They’re protected species from which we need protection

A red-bellied black snake. Picture: Damian Shaw

Our three beloved dogs, Squire, CJ and Truffy – all dead within days of each other. Three graves side by side, adding to a pet cemetery that began four decades ago.

Squire, the patriarch, was one of very few Elmswood dogs to survive to old age. One was run over by a neighbour. One was killed by a kangaroo. We found Truffy the truffle-dog puppy – less than a year old – dying in the garden from snake bite. Squire’s daughter, CJ, died of unknown causes, but probably also a snake bite. That would make her the fifth to die that way. (Desperate dashes to the vets couldn’t save them. Few dogs survive a snake bite whereas, strangely, cats can.)

We’ve had many skirmishes with snakes – protected species from which we need protection. Our daughter Rory learned to crawl in close proximity to one, which was discovered when moving a TV set. It was presumably seeking warmth rather than entertainment. We found evidence of long-term residency in three shed skins.

I’ve lost count of the snakes we’ve had in the swimming pool – one was in there just last week. Though that’ll be it for the year. Near-zero temperatures trigger hibernation. Which makes the deaths of Truffy and CJ all the sadder.

When Rory was little we used to swim in the billabong below the homestead and often found snakes swimming beside us. Mostly blacks or red-bellied blacks, deemed far less venomous than browns or tigers, which are among the world’s deadliest – although a neighbour damn near died from the bite of a black. He was climbing over a barbed-wire fence when he felt something sharp and assumed he’d snagged his leg on a barb. It took a helicopter flight to John Hunter Hospital to save him.

We once found a small and very aggro tiger snake in the laundry. Managed to get a bucket over it. For fear of self-incrimination, that story ends here. Another close encounter was beneath the swimming pool, where, trying to clean a filter, I disturbed a brown that lunged at my face. Just missed. Very hard to tourniquet your head.

A farm worker sleeping in one of the cottages dreamt there was a snake in his bed. Awaking in terror, he found there wasn’t. But perhaps there had been. There was one under the bed. And later he found two in his truck that had managed to wriggle inside via the front wheel and a running board. Quite tricky removing them. Just as I found it tricky to remove eggs from a chook pen with snakes in residence. Two of them – one black and one brown, though folklore has them avoiding each other. Once again I shall avoid self-incrimination... but I managed to evict them, returning egg theft to the province of a huge goanna.

At last count I’ve identified six species of snake around Elmswood, the sixth being small, very beautiful and hopefully non-deadly. But serious serpents don’t only kill our pets. Cattle nosing through the grass can disturb a snoozing snake and also fall victim.

You learn snake protocol. If you see one, stand very still – then start to walk slowly backwards. This doesn’t always work, of course. A particularly territorial black one once chased me for about 20 yards while I did a John Landy.

My advice: don’t have a Jack Russell as a farm dog. It’ll confuse itself with a mongoose and take a snake on. And it’ll lose, as two earlier graves at Elmswood attest. And learn how to treat snakebite on humans.