Sunday, March 8, 2009

Psst, the New new fridge is still working.

Yay! (Shhhh, don't want to put the mockers on it.)

I saw a snake today, scared hell out of me. I'd just let Floyd off to go down with the other dogs about a half hour before. He galloped down to the dogyard and ran along the fence with Meg on the other side. I let him in and then fed them and came back inside for a while.

I heard the mickey birds (native miners) going off out the back and Floyd was barking. I went to see what the noise was all about. Floyd has a habit of running over to where the mickey birds are and barking at them (they sit in the trees and make a racket, usually when there's predatory birds around, or snakes).

As I stepped off the concrete under the pergola I was looking at the dogs. About two paces later I was looking down and stopped... a black hose... moving... aaaargh! A snake. A black snake. Only about 2 foot long (I'm old, centimetres? 2.2cm/inch, work it out!). It slithered under some leaves. I whacked the ground with a star picket a few times to scare it away.

I have someone coming tomorrow to mow/whipper snip for me, but rain is forecast for the next week.

I've repaired the fence
***

The First 48, a show from the US that I like, started again last Sunday. It's on after I've gone to bed and I haven't connected up the video yet, I have a dvd recorder but it's primitive, and klunky to use (it only records 2 hours or one DVD, you can set it a certain way you can record 4 hours, but that's a pain).

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

kae,
snakes, I had the best results with a wide mouth shovel, after the shotgun of course.

You can cut them or flatten them with the shovel.
We used to have literally dozens of them coming dangerously near the house every month in summer, when we lived on the farm at East Trentham Vic. right in the middle of the state forest.

Best advice I can give, and I mean it, get out of the way, leave them alone!
For your sake not the bloody snake's!
Cheers
Orion

kae said...

I just worry about the mix of dog and snake - Old Bundy, who will be 15 in April, wouldn't even know a snake was there, Meg's a bit dumb and wouldn't know either, but Floyd would have to see what it is and leap all over the place and jump on it, thinking it's another toy to play with, like Meg, and everything/one else in the world.

Floyd is huge, too. He must be about 20kg now.

kc said...

Kae, sounds like Floyd would do the same thing our boy-kitty liked to do. We brought Buddy from Hawai'i, where there aren't any snakes...according to rumour, anyway. He's since gone to the big sandbox in the sky, but he was SO funny to watch when he'd get hold of the garden snakes that show up around here when the weather gets miserably hot. He did the leaping & flinging thing, crouching tiger, the whole bit. He was a good cat.

Haven't had a rattler around in awhile, I'll be perfectly content to continue in that mode.

kae said...

Hi KC
The most common snakes around here, ones that cause the most concern, are poisonous. The black snake and the brown snake are poisonous, very. I'd rather he was a bit dumb about snakes.
I'd be heartbroken if anything happened to him, he's so young and has so much potential. I'm less worried about the other two as they're pretty dumb about slithery things on the ground and the birds kicking up a stink... that's what'll get Floyd into trouble, racing over to see what the birds are squwarking about, and trying to chase them away.

kae said...

I must get a couple of pix of Floyd with Porky Meg.

Minicapt said...

2.54 cm per in.

Sigh ...

Minicapt said...

2.208 lb per kg.

Just in case ...

kae said...

Pedant!