SNAKES

Hokitika Guardian, 30 January 1929, Page 8

SNAKES

THEI R STR ANUt, WAYS. sOME AUSTRALIAN EXAMPLES. SYDNEY, Jan. 17. Probably due to the dry season snakes arc very plentiful in the bush districts of Australia this season, and almost every day the papers contain varies of encounters with the reptiles. Some of these stories are amazing in diameter, for snakes turn up in the most unexpected places, and do the most unexpected things. They are not hings to lie trilled with, though the iite seldom proves fatal these days, -imply because the hush folk are welt prepared for such emergencies. The other day a linesman in Queensland while repairing a telephone fire box, encountered a snake inside the box and was bitten. He was able to give himself the necessary attention, hurried to a hospital miles away, and his life was saved. Nobody can explain how the snake entered the telephone box, but snakes have funny little ways like that. At the Sydney markets not long ago a man opened a box of !bana-» nas that had come from Queensland.j and ho was bitten by a snake, which had secreted itself inside the case, apparently between the time the case was packed and the top battens were .listened down.

In a Melbourne suburb a few weeks ago a man who had been sleeping on a. porch discovered in the morning that iiis bed mate during the night had lean a venomous snake. He had not been bitten. This recalls the story of a Cushman in Central Australia. He woke up in the middle of the night with an uncanny feeling. He was sleeping out and lie felt something cold reposing on bis leg. Guessing what the intruder was lie carefully and gradually removed liis rugs. A sudden movement would have meant a snake bite. When the reptile felt the cold air upon it, it uncoiled and set out for a warmer •pot. Tt met with a violent death on the way.

L|ast winter a. small 'black snake turned up at a Off ling wood (Melbourne) home through the water tap. Not long before that event another did out of a water tap in another Alelbourne suburb. Last August, when the Moeraki was on a voyage from Suva to Lautoka. the midnight silence of the ship was broken by the screaming of a woman passenger. She had been awakened bv a. squirmy feeling on her neck. She brushed her neck with her hand and a snake fell to the floor. Her husband killed it. However, she need not have been afraid, because the snake belonged to the non poisonous type.

“The Melbourne' Herald” records the case of a Tasmanian youth who was hunting rabbits. He put liis hand dawn a burrow and was bitten by a snake To make sure of not being poisoned he shot off the bitten linger with a. gun. A snwinillcr in Victoria went to sleep alter having bis lunch out in a paddock. "When he woke up bis dog was barking fiercely at a snake coiled around hits master’s leg. The man silenced his dog and waited in an agony of apprehension. After what seemed to lie limit's the snake uncoiled and crawled away. The man was so stiff from bis enforced rigidity that, be could not get up in time to kill it. ft is always dangerous to disturb a snake by spasmodic movements.