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big snake!
big snake!
--Susan; Feb 1, 2005
Several times we've had to pay the price for
exploring remote spots (arrived and found nothing, paid more than
we thought to get there, lost for hours, etc.). But usually it's
been great. Today, however, we thought we might have to pay with
our lives (cue evil laughter and scary music).
The deserted beach we'd heard about from
the locals was well worth the hike through the tangled underbrush.
We lazed our way through the day like a couple of housecats
and towards sunset, we start the return journey. I follow
Grace as we retrace our morning steps when suddenly, he
jumps backwards like a Carl Lewis replay, mumbling incomprehensibly
to himself. I'm pretty sure he's gone mad. Now white as
a ghost, he's pointing and yelling, "BIG SNAKE!! BIG
SNAKE!!" Sure enough, there on our path is a very big
snake - thick as my arm and well over six feet long, with
its strategically placed head right on our path. At this
point, it’s worth reiterating that Australia has a
reputation for trying to kill you (see the australia
will kill you sidebar in the previous
entry). So while we can usually reason our way out of
adverse situations, we've recently been plied with posters
and pamphlets on all sorts of various nasties and neither
of us is confident about what to do. We quickly discuss
our options while the dusk mosquitoes make a 12-course meal
of us:
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a) Run and jump over it, but Grace says, "No way. It's
way faster than us so if it wants to spring up and kill us,
we'll die (well, one of us will anyway)." |
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b) Turn back and wait for it to move – but this may
take a long time and with the sun setting quickly we might
not be able to find our way home in the dark. |
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c) It's brown and huge so it's probably not poisonous so
we should just cross and not worry about it - ummm... possibly,
but what if we're wrong. |
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d) It's probably more scared of us than we are of it
– yea, right. |
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e) Run around it through the thick and thorny surrounding
bush – but what if there are other faster, more poisonous
snakes in there, not to mention deadly spiders and who knows
what else? |
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f) Throw something at it - yea, that's it, let's throw something
at it and scare it away. |
A small rock. A big rock. A stick. A bigger
stick. A really big stick. All of these things thrown at the snake
only reveal that we have rotten aim in times of adversity. Except
the big stick – bullseye! It basically skids to a stop on
top of the snake. But the snake doesn’t flinch. Argh. We
go over our options again, replacing “big snake” with
"really pissed-off big snake."
Feeling that time is running out, we decide
to brave it through the surrounding bush. We plan a route giving
the snake a wide berth, take a deep breath and run screaming through
the forest like teenage girls at a Justin Timberlake concert.
Scraped and scratched, we make it, and keep on running! Five seconds
up the trail, our wits about us again, we decide to go back and
take a photo of the snake so that we can 1) identify whether it
is actually deadly, and 2) have proof of our heroic escape. We
return to "the scene," but the snake is gone! Only the
big stick remained. Obviously, we should have simply given it
its space in the first place. Oh well, next time we'll know. Actually,
next time we'll probably run screaming again.
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