Getting Chased By An Eastern Brown Snake…

… And beating up crocodiles.

Australia is a scary place to live, we know that. Snakes, spiders, sharks, killer jellyfish and crocodiles top the list of Australia’s dangerous creatures. For most people though, it’s snakes and spiders that cause the most concern, because they inhabit the same space as us humans.

Land.

Some of you may have already read my post about my first real live encounter with a wild snake here in Australia. If you haven’t, why not check it out now and watch the video of me “chasing” an Eastern Brown with my camera in my hand.

But I’m not the only one to have chased a brown snake with my camera in my hand, oh no. And this guy’s snake is a little bit bigger than my one and it’s somewhat more aggressive. For me, there’s two ways of interpreting this video. But I think I’ll let you watch it first and I’ll talk about that after.

Here’s the video…..

As I said, there’s two ways of looking at this video. First, you could say “Wow, those snakes are scary! Cancel Australia, I ain’t going!”

Or you could say “Wow, that poor snake, he just wants to be left alone!”

And he does. That’s all he wants, just to be left alone.

A bit of background. The film has been taken by a snake catcher. He has just removed this snake from inside a bush hotel and is returning it to the wild. So he sort of knows what he’s doing.

As for the snake, he just doesn’t like being chased. And why should he? So, at first, he just turns around and gives the guy a look, a tongue wiggle, and then continues on his way. That would have been enough to send most of us packing. But the snake catcher still follows.

So then the snake turns around and gives a little chase, as if to say “Dude, get off my back!” If the guy had walked away then, that would have been the end of it. But he didn’t.

So he got another warning, this one a little more aggressive “Look, I won’t tell you again mate!” Still he didn’t listen so the snake simply upped the aggression until finally, “Ok, next time I’m going to bite, now LEAVE ME ALONE!”

The video ends abruptly, but on the basis that Greg Wallis, who I think made the video, has put quite a few more up since then, well, we can assume he survived.

I am hoping that rather than being scary, this video shows you that all you need to do is walk away if you see a snake. That’s it. And I hope you can also see that snakes have no interest in hunting humans. They know they can’t eat a whole one.

So, you have to ask, what have you got to do to get bitten by a snake around here? I suspect you need to either tread on one by accident or handle one badly. Or go snake chasing! Let’s reverse engineer that.

How to Avoid Being Bitten By a Snake in Australia.

• Be careful where you tread.
• Don’t pick up snakes.
• Don’t go snake chasing.

Beating up Crocodiles?

Recently there was a headline in the newspapers “Man swimming with daughters fights off 3m crocodile at Weipa“. That was in the Herald Sun.

Shortly after that, I saw this headline “Fisherman fights off 4m saltwater croc” in The Australian.

Hello, somebody is exaggerating, I thought. One minute it’s a 3 metre croc and now its 4 metres? But no, there was no exaggeration at all. It was two separate incidents and both took place in Weipa, Far North Queensland.

The first attack was on a 37-year-old man who was swimming in a waterhole with his two teenage daughters. He punched the crocodile on the snout and gouged his eyes to escape. I couldn’t find his name anywhere but I suspect it’s probably Popeye.

And the second attack was on Todd Bairstow, a 28-year-old miner. That fight apparently lasted a staggering 40 minutes before local man, Kevin Bevin, whacked the croc with a tree branch until it let go.

See, Australia, not so scary after all.