It was unseasonably warm last Wednesday and
walking home (five hundred metres) from my office, I stopped in the glade to
watch a pair of eastern whip birds mucking about. They’re normally fairly timid
and a fleeting glimpse is a rare treat, though you can hear their whip-crack
call from a kilometre or so away. They have a white throat and a little crest
that gives them a kind of startled appearance. The pair in the glade were
playing a robust game of follow the leader and when they vanished into the
undergrowth, I stepped off towards the barn. My foot rolled on something and I
looked down to see a tiger snake pinned under my boot. In the second or so it
took to realise what had happened, the snake recoiled and butted my jeans with
a closed mouth. I leapt into the air and almost landed on it again before
completing the second movement in the ballet known locally as Reptillus Shittus Brickus. There’s a
simple song that goes with it: ‘Faaaaaaaaarrrrrkkkk’. Sing along if you know
the words …
Once I’d regained my composure, I held my
heart and followed the snake into the bush—it was a beautiful glossy sub-adult
I hadn’t seen before and an un-striped slaty grey colour. It didn’t escape at
speed, giving me time to apologise for standing on its neck. Or its back. Or its
tail. Whatever. I said sorry, but I know they’re deaf. Make as much noise as
you like in the bush—they can’t hear you. Those sonic snake repellants are as
useful as water-based raincoats. They don’t sense the vibrations, either:
they’re aware of movement and hypersensitive to the smell/taste of their prey.
Owls, on the other hand, have awesome
hearing and even better sight, which had me puzzling the following evening when
I found a boobook owl trapped in the old chicken coop. The chickens are long gone (they
have their own mobile pen, now), but the rats and mice that used to live off
the food scraps and pellets are still camping out in there. Maybe the owl was
hunting those? I turned my phone into a torch and could get quite close to the
wide-eyed pretty, but it may have been freaking out for a while before I got
there. I spoke calmly and offered my forearm as a roost, which it obligingly
perched on. With my heart beating in my mouth, I snapped a dodgy picture with
my phone before carrying the wildest of wild things into the open. I felt the
air from its wings as it powered off into the darkness, but I didn’t hear a
thing. Not even a thank you. Ungrateful beast … oh how I love thee …
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