Yesterday morning, I was woken up by a damsel in distress – there was a SNAKE on the VERANDAH! This required immediate attention so after a leisurely rise and getting dressed, I wandered out to find a juvenile python all of about a foot long hanging out behind an assortment of chairs and decorative statues.
While I am not a huge fan of snakes, I also recognise that they are not the bad guys here so there was no shovel to the head. Using a 15L bucket the snake was relocated to a garden bed at the front of the house to continue its good work of existing. It slithered off in to the mock orange and palm trees and that was the end of part 1.
Part 2 begins with the giveaway of a water fountain. It was quite expensive – to the tune of almost five hundred dollars – but given our assorted dogs and their propensity for destruction it never really got used properly out of fear it would end up in Beagle tummies. It spent the first six months next door being a frog spa bath but since people kept forgetting to refill it and the pump kept running dry it was left off and eventually (unknown to us) became home to a family of rats.
Out of the goodness of our hearts, we opted to give away the fountain so it could be used by someone instead of being a static veranda aesthetic. Because my generosity knows no limits, I also cleaned it out for the new owner. It was at this point I became aware of the family of rats mostly because some pinkie babies came floating out when I was hosing it. Now is not the time for jokes, so I will make no references to the late 1990s hit Australian television drama starring Colin Friels and Catherine McClements.
Given the mother rat had said a “hooroo” to her kids and ducked out, and given they were rats, their life was already forfeit. I actually thought they had drowned given they spent quite some time under water during my thorough cleaning but after a few minutes of recovery in the garbage bag I originally intended to dispose of them in, they sprang to life like a tiny rodenty Jesuses. And like Jesus, they were about to be betrayed….
I heard ticking noises and found Erin coming up with a thought – if we have tiny pinkie babies, and we have a tiny snake, and tiny snakes eat tiny babies… what if….
Anyway long story short we fed a snake some baby rats.
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