Snakes in Australia: The Dwarf Crowned Snake

….. and that’s a dead one!

A lot of people have this opinion, but it’s not one that I subscribe to here on BobinOz. In fact, since arriving in Australia I’ve been quite fascinated by snakes to the point where I now think I like them.

Perhaps that line of thinking may come back and literally “bite me on the backside” but even if it did, it probably wouldn’t be the snakes fault.

Don’t get me wrong, I have had very little to do with snakes, but being as I am living in a country that does have, I think it’s eight out of the 10 most dangerous snakes in the world, I felt it my duty to get to know them a bit better. Back in the UK, for me, a snake was something you slid down when playing a game with dice.

So I’ve watched quite a few snake programs here, listened to a few snake stories and kept my eyes very peeled in the hope of seeing some wild snakes.

To recap, I’ve been here two years and four months now and so far I’ve only had a few encounters. The first wild snake I saw was in the Botanical Gardens, Brisbane. It was a small and harmless carpet snake and if it hadn’t have been pointed out to me, I would have missed it.

Then, when camping in Mt Tamborine, I was invited into the storeroom of a shop on the camp that had a resident, wild and much larger carpet python. Again, if it hadn’t have been pointed out to me I would have missed it.

Then, just last month, I had my first real encounter with a wild and venomous snake. Well, I say encounter, all that actually happened was that I saw it. But I did happen to have two cameras on me and you can see the video of our meeting over at my post called …. Snakes in Australia: My First Real Live Encounter.

But then yesterday I was walking across the rocky area of my back garden when I saw this little fellow……

This is exactly how I found him and on first sight, I thought he was alive. Alas, sadly he wasn’t. The strange thing was, he looked in good shape and there was no evidence of any reason why he could have died. He was also tiny, just about 30 cm long, or as we English would say, about a foot. So I thought he was a baby.

I grabbed my “Wildlife of Greater Brisbane” book to see what it was. Turns out he was not a baby at all, but a Dwarf Crowned Snake. These tiny snakes only grow to around 35 cm as adults and like to live in damp and rocky areas. Well, it’s certainly been damp around here lately.

Over at the snakecatchers website, this snake is described as “weakly venomous” and more inclined to give you a fake bite with its mouth closed, or a “head butt” as they put it. Yeah, that’d hurt, look at the size of his head….

My book said “treat with caution”, not this snake I’m afraid.

Ului Update

I said on Monday that Ului was pronounce yule-a-wee, thanks to the tip off from the online Courier Mail. It seems I may have been the only person to read the article, as everyone else, including newsreaders, are calling it “oooh-loo-eee”.

There you go, all up to date.

Oh, no. Forget. Yes, apparently it is still heading our way and the most common forecast appears to be that it will cross over onto Queensland’s mainland, probably at some point in the middle. Of course, there’s still time for it to change direction or simply fizzle out. Well that would be nice.

Because if it doesn’t, then we are in for a scary ride this weekend here in Queensland, and somewhere, that somewhere being the point where the cyclone crosses over to the mainland, is going to cop it really bad.

My poor little snake looked really cute, but this cyclone has the potential of becoming a real Australian bad thing.