Melbourne

Melbourne
Christmas day in Melbourne this year (2011) was a typical Melbourne affair. It was overcast in the morning. In the middle of the day it got hot and sunny and later on the heavens opened and we had rain like you wouldn’t believe, with golf-ball-sized hail stones thrown in to give us the “white Christmas” usually associated with European destinations.
As Melbourne’s only 24-hour snake catcher, I had the usual calls to catch snakes over Christmas.The first call out in inner suburban Melbourne was for a large Tiger Snake.
I went there and caught it fairly easily.
It turned out to be a large Blue-tongued Lizard. On the way to this call out I saw another three dead Bluetongues on the roads.
Why people can’t swerve to miss these I don’t know.
The lizards are great as they rid gardens of that other feral pest, the European snail.
I have typically let a lot go around my own area when I’ve caught them in other suburbs, but now don’t as the numbers here are too large and they bash each other up.
Just last month I found a bruised and battered Bluetongue walking along the garden parth.
It had bite marks all over it that had obviously been inflicted by another Bluetonge lizard.
Bluetongues are genetrally OK with people and rarely bite, except perhaps when first captured or generally mistreated.
However with one another it can be quite a different story.
They bite one another and can inflict quite severe injuries on one another.
Most commin is the occasional male who seeks to dominate everythign else that has scales.
Typical are blood drawing bite marks on the head and chewed up tails, often later seen as tails with buckles and creases in them.
My second call out on Christmas was for a Copperhead that had turned up at a birthday event for a Melbourne kids party in Melbourne’s outer suburb of Cranbourne North.
The snake had moved in from a large grassy paddock next door and was a big male.
Although the weather was warm at the time, the snake was in the shade in a large dry shed and very easy to catch.
Half underneath a piece of wood, I simply lifted the plank and then quickly placed the snake with my hand into a plastic tub.
No sticks, no tongs and not even the need to “tail” the snake.
With more than 40 years experience specifically with Copperheads, I know when they are likely to bite and this one simply wasn’t interested.
Therefore I wasn’t going to give it a reason to bite me by inflicting any pain on the snake.
Going to and from the house to catch the snake, the traffic was intolerably heavy with people going to parties. The main south-eastern freeway was at a standstill outbound from the Eastlink Tollway, to the split at the south-gippsland freeway.
As it was a slow trip to the snake call out, I was lucky that the snake hadn’t been on the move, otherwise I may not have caught it.
The Police were out and and about with “speed cameras” on all the best bits of road, nabbing drives who drive in excess of over-low speed limits.
It is this form of entrapment for criminal offences that makes the Victorian law enforcement and legal system an international joke.
Yes, you can kill kids with hard drugs, rape, steal and murder and the police are not remotely interested in the crime. In fact they do this sort of stuff themselves.
But if you drive at 3 km an hour above an overly-low speed restriction, then the cops will bust you and parade you in public with the hatred reserved for mass murderers in other countries.
Anyway, after the Copperhead was released in one of the few relatively undisturbed parts of Melbourne’s outskirts, I returned home for a Christmas dinner with the wife and family, before the kids and myself spent the rest of the day skateboarding in a park near home.
Then the phone rang again.
Yes, it was another snake call for Melbourne’s only 24/7 snake removal service.
Cheers from the snake man