Snake Killer Hunted
Sunshine Coast lawn bowlers have closed ranks to protect an elderly man accused of killing a brown snake during a bowls tournament at the Kawana Waters club last week.
Fifty percent of all deaths from snakebite in Australia involve the Brown snake. They have venom which can cause death to humans relatively quickly if left untreated. Brown snakes up to 2.3 metres have been recorded in Australia.
Then there is the King Brown….yep, it’s a whole lot worse.
I’m with the old guy.
How times change. When I was young and on the farm, the arrival of a snake was a bugle call for all the men to gather, hunt it down and kill it. To the best of my memory all snakes in the south west of West Australia were poisonous, but even if they weren’t they were still hunted down. In the small timber and farming community of Pemberton the men reasoned any snake left alive could one day kill a woman or child and they just weren’t taking the risk.
Years later I was an NCO instructor at the famous, or infamous (depending on whether you were an instructor or student) Jungle Training Centre at Canungra, Queensland, and when teaching patrolling would stop and kill any snake I came across, including Carpet snakes. I don’t discriminate..if your are long and legless, you’re dead! I recall telling my Captain about a Carpet snake I killed one particular day and he went off his head.
Protected species…harmless to humans…I’ll charge you if you do it again.
Hmm…city boy, I thought, as somewhat miffed, I hastily departed the scene .
The next morning the local Courier Mail, with terrific timing, carried an article about a farmer in Far North Queensland who kept a carpet snake in his barn to keep the mice down. The snake had done such a good job that there were no mice left so he went further afield for food.
To the homestead, in fact.
The farmer was woken by the screams of his 6 year old son who was stressed out at seeing his leg being swallowed by the ten foot snake.
I cut out the article, requested an audience with Captain City Boy, politely placed the evidence for the defence on his desk without comment…saluted smartly and withdrew.
My Dad always said never smirk in front of the defeated foe.
Fifty percent of all deaths from snakebite in Australia involve the Brown snake. They have venom which can cause death to humans relatively quickly if left untreated. Brown snakes up to 2.3 metres have been recorded in Australia.
Then there is the King Brown….yep, it’s a whole lot worse.
I’m with the old guy.
How times change. When I was young and on the farm, the arrival of a snake was a bugle call for all the men to gather, hunt it down and kill it. To the best of my memory all snakes in the south west of West Australia were poisonous, but even if they weren’t they were still hunted down. In the small timber and farming community of Pemberton the men reasoned any snake left alive could one day kill a woman or child and they just weren’t taking the risk.
Years later I was an NCO instructor at the famous, or infamous (depending on whether you were an instructor or student) Jungle Training Centre at Canungra, Queensland, and when teaching patrolling would stop and kill any snake I came across, including Carpet snakes. I don’t discriminate..if your are long and legless, you’re dead! I recall telling my Captain about a Carpet snake I killed one particular day and he went off his head.
Protected species…harmless to humans…I’ll charge you if you do it again.
Hmm…city boy, I thought, as somewhat miffed, I hastily departed the scene .
The next morning the local Courier Mail, with terrific timing, carried an article about a farmer in Far North Queensland who kept a carpet snake in his barn to keep the mice down. The snake had done such a good job that there were no mice left so he went further afield for food.
To the homestead, in fact.
The farmer was woken by the screams of his 6 year old son who was stressed out at seeing his leg being swallowed by the ten foot snake.
I cut out the article, requested an audience with Captain City Boy, politely placed the evidence for the defence on his desk without comment…saluted smartly and withdrew.
My Dad always said never smirk in front of the defeated foe.
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I’m with you Kev. I’ve been forced to agree that, yes, they are ‘beautiful’ in a scaley, slithery sort of fashion, but I still believe the only good snake is a dead snake!
Good on the old bowler and his mates.
Oh well, a boy is a pig is a boy according to the esteemed head of PETA. Off topic, I would like to say congrats on your wonderful Music of the Vietnam War years. Have just spent approximately four hours playing music and had many laughs and tears. Thank you for taking the time to do this, its much appreciated.
Thanks to greeny hugging pollies, scrub and towns are infested with them, all the deadly types. In snake season, there are areas which,are now amenable to the suicidal. May this year, I had a view to take an
exploratory fly fishing wander a long stretch of a creek. A chap from fisheries I bumped into in
a local tackle shock killed that notion: `I was there yesterday, and this morning, and a couple of days last week for the job, and, the place is lousy with them.’
The snake population has not so much increased as exploded, over the last few years. And, yes,
they are now infesting towns with the consequence, children are carted off to hospital.These, these days, I make careful inspection of garden and shed before poking around. I’m all for weilding snake
elimination implements, freely, as often as rrequired.Indeed, for fly fishing, a shotgun walking stick seems just the right sort of snake bite prevention.