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Another snake

Gulfalan67

Gulfalan67

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Hi folks,

As many of you know we have lots of snakes around our patch, some of them benign ( unless you're a chook!) and some you'd rather avoid. Id guess there are three species we regularly see around the house and a couple more regular spotted across other parts of the property.

Last night saw a brand new snake. One I'd never seen before, let alone on the property. Its not an endangered snake but not seen very often in the tropics.

It was a mulga snake, otherwise known as a King Brown. The Boy detected it just a couple of hundred metres from our house. He pointed it out to me in his usual style, luckily keeping well back. This one was about 2.5 metres long and as thick as your wrist. An impressive creature but it probably doesn't deserve its fearsome reputation. We won't take any chances though.

Always pleased to spot something new at home! Unfortunately didn't have a camera to take a snap.

Cheers

Alan
 
I’ve just looked them up, very poisonous Mark, pretty looking though with their beautiful bronze scales.
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Big Red said:
I have seen a few on my trips to Australia……….Always behind glass!
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I use to work replacing roofs in Stirling with my cousin and to save money I stayed with him in his spare room, unfortunately his spare room was a bloody zoo🤷🏼‍♂️ And my bed was under the 14foot yellow constrictors cage (forget the actual name,but it was a big bloody snake) and surrounding it was smaller vivariums with lizards and snakes and two parrots,,, I’m still traumatised 😂 you could hear it moving around 🫣
 
Ark79 said:
I use to work replacing roofs in Stirling with my cousin and to save money I stayed with him in his spare room, unfortunately his spare room was a bloody zoo🤷🏼‍♂️ And my bed was under the 14foot yellow constrictors cage (forget the actual name,but it was a big bloody snake) and surrounding it was smaller vivariums with lizards and snakes and two parrots,,, I’m still traumatised 😂 you could hear it moving around 🫣
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Did you get nightmares about it escaping and slithering into bed with you? Nope? Well ye will noo!
 
King Brown isn't the most venomous snake we have. This property is scattered with little Death Adders which curl up in the leaf litter awaiting a clumsy footstep. We have Western Browns and a a couple of other venomous snakes, but the real nasty would be the Taipan. I've never seen a wild Taipan in my life ( never saw a King Brown until Sunday), but this is their habitat so they must be here. We just dont see them. They are seriously venomous. While the King Brown is certainly deadly we don't consider it particularly venomous, at least not compared with the Taipan.

I'm not sure if anybody has ever survived a Taipan nip. Even a tiny amount of venom would kill extremely quickly.

The nice thing about the King Brown is ( as Mike said) its a handsome looking snake. I guess this is subjective opinion. I believe it has a partial hood like a cobra that spreads when threatened but I didn't see that on Sunday. The Boy and I were careful not to disturb the animal.

I once quite accidentally ran over a cobra in the Sahara while driving over a dune. The poor creature was unhurt just forced into the Sand. He raised a good metre of his body up and flared his hood in protest when we doubled back to check he was OK. Incredible animals. I stayed in my truck though.

Alan
 
A regular (western) brown I spotted this morning while digging out the toilet compost pit. I get all the best jobs 🤣

Fetched my camera from indoors and snapped this.
Although very common across Australia, we don't see too many around the house. Good thing too.
Sometimes ranked third most venomous terrestrial snake.

This little fella was bizarre. He completely froze and played dead when I approached him. I actually thought he might be dead. So I nudged him with a stick.

Found out he was alive alright!! 😱

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Alan
 
Gulfalan67 said:
A regular (western) brown I spotted this morning while digging out the toilet compost pit. I get all the best jobs 🤣

Fetched my camera from indoors and snapped this.
Although very common across Australia, we don't see too many around the house. Good thing too.
Sometimes ranked third most venomous terrestrial snake.

This little fella was bizarre. He completely froze and played dead when I approached him. I actually thought he might be dead. So I nudged him with a stick.

Found out he was alive alright!! 😱

View attachment 116393
View attachment 116394

Alan
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A lot of people seem to have an in-built fear of snakes scorpions and spiders, when I was in the Yemen in 1964 we had all of them all over the place. A favourite place for Camel Spiders to congregate was in our tents.
What people fail to understand is that none of those beasties are going to attack them unless you start messing about with them and then you can definitely be in deep shit.
 
peteff said:
Would that include poking them with a stick ? :p
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We used to poke the scorpions and spiders and keep them in an ammo box with a bit of glass on top, you could make big money betting on the results of scorpion or spider fights.
The snakes we kept well clear of, they weren't very big and we never saw them that often.
They were Asps and very venomous
 

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Joecole said:
We used to poke the scorpions and spiders and keep them in an ammo box with a bit of glass on top, you could make big money betting on the results of scorpion or spider fights.
The snakes we kept well clear of, they weren't very big and we never saw them that often.
They were Asps and very venomous
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I’m no expert but that seems unwise.
 
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