SSSSnakes!!!!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

It’s common knowledge, I do not like these things.
They’re gross, scaley, ugly to look at, and DANGEROUS!

Most importantly, they ATTACK me.

Two mates I know, own snakes and are always trying to get me to come over and visit and hold their snakes. HELL NO!
They talk about their snake, like it’s a beloved pet that’s cute and cuddly and adorable.

They are dillusional. Sorry Mike and Skot.

So I just realised I had forgotten to log my last two encounters with snakes.
These happened back in November.

First off, I live right near here.

I live in in the top right of the left pic.

Perth Wetlands, where there are 19 lakes and kilometres of bush in between.
Abundant wildlife is an understatement.

So when I first moved into my house, i decided to follow one of the trails whilst on my daily dog jog.
We were about 2 km into the regional park, when up ahead I spotted a tiger snake.

It was about 4m long and took up more than the width of the tiny path we were on.

Benny (the puppy of 5 weeks old) hadn’t spotted it, but I had.
I waited for a while for it to move, but it didn’t.
Slowly we turned and quickly made the hell out of there.

Snake averted.

Encounter number two.

About 2 weeks later, my mom was over, and the two of us were walking Benny.
I had previously told mom about the snake encounter, and her being just as scared of them, maybe more, wanted to stick to the residential roads.
So we’re walking on the sidewalk and I suddenly jump and run to the other side with B man.
Mom stops and looks and sprints to the other side.
This is what we saw.

Note bennys legs in the corner of the picture.

So that was last year and the two snakes.

This week, however was another story.

It was Tuesday night, and we were going for an evening run.
I’ve been tending to go at night time as the days are still so hot.

This particular night, I’d extended our run to 5km.
We were nearing the end of our run, and going up a punishing hill, when I spotted something in the middle of the road.

Now we run in the middle of the road, as our area has very little light, and the most light is normally on the road.
At first I thought it was a cat, then I thought it was a pile discarded clothing.
At the last minute I decided to run round the object, only to have it hiss and lunge at me.
Turns out what I thought had been harmless, was a rather large tiger snake.
it missed my legs by about 30cm.
I actually yelled out in fear and the two of us somehow managed to sprint up the hill away from the snake, despite being exhausted.

We still had another 3 blocks to go till home, so we were plodding along, keeping closer to the curbs, a fair bit jittery when suddenly out of nowhere a dugite lunges out at us, hissing.

We sprinted all the way home, and even Benny was jumping at any foreign sound.

The Dugite’s venom is potentially one of the most lethal in the world, causing coagulopathic and procoagulant effects. The last time a death was recorded by this snake, was in MY NEIGHBOURHOOD.

Scary.

Now when I go running and it’s nearly dark or is, I’m so overly cautious and jittery it’s not even funny. I don’t enjoy my runs so much anymore.