Guess What? It's Poisonous

Eric made it back safely from the States on Friday which left us the weekend to spend together bludging. Bludging is my latest Aussie word, but technically we weren't really bludging. Bludging is basically hanging out with a connotation of being a sponge. We were hanging out, but we weren't sponging.

I gave Eric the option of doing whatever he wanted to do for the weekend and number one on his list was going goanna hunting. As is so often the case in life, the weather was non-cooperative on Saturday so we watched a few movies and did our grocery shopping instead. The good news is Sunday was nice so that afternoon we headed out to the site of my previously way-cool and successful goanna hunt - Tomaree Head.

We tramped along heading toward the spot where I spotted my big'un a few weeks ago. Just past that point I spotted a SNAKE! Since it's Australia, it seemed prudent to assume it might be poisonous. I snapped a bunch of pictures all the while making sure we gave it a really, really, really wide berth.

After watching the snake do its snaky things for a while, we moved on down the path. It wasn't long after that we spotted a goanna! It was not a big'un; it was around 3 feet long and just plain cute. I didn't think I'd ever say that about a lizard, but goas (as Aussies call them) just seem to start growing on ya. We saw another one about the same size later on, but alas, we did not see my big guy or his brother. This goa was in a tree which was a bit disturbing because this means I need to be watching the ground and above me all at once.

We next did the short walk to Zenith Beach and saw another snake. Since some of my coworkers have not seen any snakes in the wild in the year they've been here, it seemed a bit crazy to see two in one day.

When we got home we looked up the snake, and, yep, it's poisonous. It's an Australian red-bellied black snake. The description for its bite, "seek immediate medical attention", was just a bit sobering, but our strategy of treating everything here as poisonous seems to be a good one.

We'll be keeping with that strategy on our next hunting adventure.