Blackie cheats death - twice

For those used to sup on 'executive summaries', here the net-net: Blackie the red-bellied blacksnake survives against all odds. So do I... but there's a sting in the tail!

For the leisurely version, speed-read on...


I didn't get much done today, after a wild night with a two-hour twister of a thunderstorm running circles around the homestead and throwing lightning bolts from every direction.

When the storm struck at about 1 am, I clambered from the sleepingt loft above our kitchen quick smart in the dark, racing to my 'office' where I hurriedly unplugged every computer and telephone line. Then Bianca and I listened to the welcome rain that came with the storm, and counted seconds between lightning flashes - which helped put my patient partner to sleep almost immediately.

I lay awake until about 3 am, having decided that the thunderstorm was almost directly overhead, judging by the violent thunderclaps following almost immediately after the flashes. I recall the time because I'd dashed down once more to unplug the Telefunken mini-hifi with its eerie green digital clock...

So naturally I went back to bed after breakfast around 7 am, and dozed through newscasts and Stephen Crittenden's eager interviews with newsmakers or foreign experts, with the interviewer always making sure he had the definite analysis well in hand before even asking his elaborate statement-like questions. And Stephen's eagerly droning provincial diction lulled me back to sleep more often than I wanted, so I got up a bit drowsily at around 9 am.

My first task was to see if the root password for my two Linux machines that I couldn't remember the day before had indeed come to me during the night, prodded by Bianca's gentle questioning about my password policies.

Indeed it had, and I was able to change a few things that required super-user access on LeMaitre and Jacques, both running SuSE Linux.

64 bits - and then some!

A bit of morning run to the gate (600 m round trip) and a quick turn with the scythe followed. Then back inside for a proper breakfast and another hour or three with my recalcitrant 64-bit beastie, LHote:

having fitted it, against my better judgement, with a DSE 'host-accelerated modem (HaM) that claimed a PCI slot, I had to juggle PCI cards and slot-bound connectors such as the extra 1394/USB port carrier and Abit's cute uGuru Clock connector, all while allowing for idiotically short fan cables from the power supply in the Antec Sonata PC case, LHote played dead upon each new reboot. Luckily, Abit had foreseen such incidents, and had fitted a cunning LED display on the AV8 motherboard which just could be read through the vent holes spelling out Antec on the case.

I spied the figures 25 as last entry in the stop-dead condition, and the manual explained this was to do with the PCI bus initialisation. I reset the CMOS and proceeded to start, then took great care to adjust the BIOS settings to a more tolerant level. Rebooting the system, it hung again at 'stop 25'. I eventually chanced upon a safe setting, as I thought, and went online to download MS critical updates and a bundle of stuff desired by Norton Systemworks 2005 Premier.

So reassured, I stepped outside to fertilise my small Black Genoa fig in front of my 'office', when I nearly stepped on Blackie. The snake did not seem right in this position - indeed I found she had entangled herself in the black birdnetting on the tree. I jiggled the netting carefully, but she was too well entrapped.

With Bianca taking pictures, I approached Blackie clad in gumboots and long rubber gloves, with a pair of scissors in one glove and a small Fiskars pruning pole in the other. I gently pinned Blackie's head to the ground with the shears of the pruner - extremely careful not to hurt her - then used the scissors to snip through the netting encircling her midriff.

This took some time, especially when I tried to cut through meshes almost embedded in Blackie's skin, so in the end she got a bit agitated and slipped out of the pruning shears hold and darted back and forth, trying to get a good bite on the black plastic pole.

I had performed my 'surgery' with great trepidation - although you get six hours to administer antivenene once bitten - so I desisted from further ministrations.

Great Lakes Wildlife Rescue seemed a logical source of help, so I called Peter, temporary custodian of the chicken-eating diamond python, and he in turn alerted a snake-handling specialist in the nearby town.

John came up in an SUV of Humvee-like proportions, but stepped out casually in shorts and sandals to look at Blackie. He applauded me for providing shelter from the sun for the snake, pointing out that snakes can die in full sun within 15-20 minutes. He allowed me to snip away some more netting, then pinned the snake's head down with a cunning contraption that seemed to consist of a triangle of metal band on a stick. He put the base of the triangle behind Blackie's head, then pressed her down more strongly than I would have dared - and suddenly gripped her body directly.

Holding her firmly behind the head, Peter got out his surgical kit and sliced easily through the embedded meshes with a fresh surgical blade in a pair of snips. He then gripped Blackie by the tail and took her, dangling without much agitation, to the frog pond outside our kitchen, where he released her to feed and recover.

"She's very emaciated towards the back - either she hasn't eaten for a while or she's given birth", quoth Peter. I'm inclined to believe the maternity leave bit, since I hadn't seen Blackie for perhaps a month.

I invited John to have a glass of Leo Buring 2003 Eden Valley Riesling, a top drop that Bianca likes, and some blue-vein cheese on Bianca's home-made sourdough bread.

John imparted a lot of snake lore, which was good to get from this expert, and then steered his bumvee back to his canal-subdivision home, after having tasted a fresh fig and accepted a small jar of my best fig conserve in semillon. Bianca had also given him some freshly laid eggs for inspecting our Fort Knox chookhouse and dispensing pointers on how we could make it really safe...

This job was down quickly in the afternoon, and while I charged the battery of my trusty old Makita portable drill, I grabbed the scythe so as not to waste time waiting.

Last I had seen of Blackie was a trail in the pond, then a freshly-washed glistening blacksnake slithered up the pond bank and away from us.

I was cutting easily through the long grass near the netted fig tree when I saw Blackie again - dashing away from beneath the blade of the scythe! I had such a shock that I nearly stumbled as I threw away the scythe. But Blackie had escaped unhurt, for the second time that day.

So I went and had the rest of the riesling with Bianca, then went back to my real job. And no, LHote would not boot past 'Stop 25'. I ripped out the silly HaM and repacked it, to take back to the shop next time we're going into town.

PS: A day later, waiting for Giulia with hubby and two small kids to drop in enroute to a week of house-hunting near us, I very nearly unpacked the damn modem again, recalling that it said something about having Linux drivers...

Instead, I took an external Acermodem 56 Surf that XP had earlier rejected as unsuitable, sold it to the 'New Hardware' wizard as a standard 56 kb/s modem - and if you read this now, I have successfully uploaded the file in this manner.

All in a day's work, wouldn't you say?

Cheers!

PPS: One 'side benefit' of constantly resetting the CMOS on my 64-bit beastie was that the Abit uGuru clock now shows a CPU temperature of between 10 C and 20 C - mostly 12-14 C with an outside temperature of 29 C! Abit and AMD have been alerted...