Snakes alive!
That 1.2 m red-bellied black snake my barely resident cyber-brat (CB) has kindly allowed to stay for the time being, seeing that she (CB) is taking her putative payload elsewhere soonest, is actually a very elegant creatur much admired by me, and somewhat less so by my wife.

Because we are wellknown to the snake, it goes about its business unhurriedly, sleekly slithering along the rough bushstone boundary of a little pond not 2 metres from our sliding kitchen door, poking its tiny head into each crevice between the stones in turn, methodically looking for frogs that believe themselves safe in the moist darkness. The snake, I HAD given it a name but can't remember now, also likes visiting the henhouse, where it is rather unwelcome and I try to shoosh it way from there. Otherwise it makes little trouble, apart from dropping what I believe to be live little young all over the place. (I picked up one of the little elvers and took him to another water body, just in case)...

You get used to the snake's presence, and generally we are aware that we share the same territory and respect each other's habits. But sometimes you forget, and find yourself half a metre or so away from 'the presence'. Obligingly, the snake moves first - in the opposite direction. People say they can feel the vibrations long before you see them, and get out of the way. It ain't so, folks, not my Blackie she don't! I once spent an entire afternoon hacking and splitting at a half a cubic metre old hardwood log near the chookhouse, then finally had the bright idea to probe the central hollow with a pole. Out came the snake, a bit sluggishly (it was winter) abd tried to hide again in the hollow. I prodded it gently again until it left its quarters, then picked it up carefully with a tined spade and deposited it near some other suitable logs 20-odd metres way...

We also give sanctuary to La Turca, a beautifully ugly but still very elegant brush turkey hen, who likes to strut her stuff close to our two adult roosters. These have so far spurned her advances. Turca, for short, likes wlaking with chooks, flies crashingly onto our tin roof at dawn, proceeds to the goose feed, patiently undoes the lid (only one gander has since learned that trik from Turca!), and has a snack of corn before taking up watch outside the chookhouse, waiting for her friends to be let out. She then disappears into the bush with them, learning their foraging tricks and showng them a few of her own. She alone, however, gracefully holds anything edible down with one foot while tearing at it with her beak - the chooks still haven't picked up that useful trick.

Turca has the kookaburras in stitchens when she does her frantic Salome dances in front of the roosters, and is not too fussed to be called from afar and accept a morsel from my own hand. That is, until Bianca caught her rearranging the hens nesting boxes and caught her in her arms: Turca is considerably more distant since....

Cyberbrat's two cats meanwhile wait dusk under the dining table, curled up on chairs and mercifully hidden from sight - and disturbance by us mere unwilling hosts! We made a little enclosed run alongside the house and I cut a flap out of the door screen, but she who sells, pardon me: sub-leases sanctuary is loath to expose them to the dangers of the night.

More about the geese and other non-indigenous folk later... Here's Fuzzle now, the ginger tomcat, already looking out at the lush bush scenery around. No Fuzz, you can't touch anything out there!

Cheers,

Carioca