2 dead snakes on the Cawongla Road this morning

With the appalling weather we've been having it's no surprise that snakes are being drawn to the warmth that bitumen roads provide them. And of course, that means that they are easily run over, either accidentally or on purpose. I suspect there's a fair bit of the latter that happens up here. So the death toll this morning as we drove down the valley to work was 2 snakes: a gravid eastern small-eyed snake, with the most beautiful pink belly, and a large eastern brown snake. This was surprising as it must have been killed this morning prior to 7.25am which is the time we drove past it. The poor thing must have been run over virtually as soon as it had begun basking on the road.

It's interesting that I've seen two dead browns in the space of a few days - usually I see dead browns in early spring when they are moving around looking for mates. By December, it's usually hot every day and so they don't need to hang around the roads trying to soak up as much warmth as they can.

I argue, with my colleague, Nancy Cushing, in Snake Bitten, that there was a general angst about snakes operating in Australia up until the 70s. I think that angst still exists in the country. I think I've written before about the 'snake netting' that used to be attached to the bottom of our house in the ridiculous belief you could keep snakes out from under the house; then there were the bottles of 'snake repellant' that the local pet shop used to sell (I haven't seen these lately); and most recently, there were ads in one of the free farmer magazines that get poked in our letterbox, featuring a snake repelling device that you plug in to the power and it emits some kind of anti-snake sound waves or something. Lordie.