Tasmania - Where Men are Men and Snakes are Sluggish

Now that I have arrived back in my beloved homeland blinking with fatigue and desperately clutching a fuzzy puffin toy I needed to do a little professional housekeeping.  I contacted my employers and told them I would be back in the office soon; they asked that next time I tell them I'm leaving.  I contacted my parents and told them I had returned; they asked who I was and why I kept calling them.  Finally I contacted my Tasmanian correspondent in the hopes something of staggering import or sensational excited had happened in my absence that I could mine for a cheap and nasty blog entry on my return.

"You're kidding right?" demanded my correspondent in what I thought were unnecessarily surly tones.  Well I wasn't exactly kidding but I had, shall we say, asked more in the hope than the expectation.  Apparently the most exciting thing to happen in Tasmania was my correspondent almost stepping on a snake.  Now I'm well aware that Tasmania has snakes.  My correspondent's parents live next door to about 97% of them.  Normally, however, the snakes do their best to keep out of people's way.  This is because snakes are brighter than most of the people who live in Tasmania.  Apparently something has changed.

My correspondent was understandably aggrieved.  She had been innocently bushwalking and she wasn't even hung over.  She made that point with sufficient vigour to make me realise that under normal circumstances she probably wouldn't notice if she stumbled into the snake pit from Raiders of the Lost Ark.  Yet despite her uncharacteristic sobriety there this snake was, sprawled in the path of her shoe and not even making a token attempt to get out of the way.

The problem was the weather, apparently it hadn't been cold enough over Winter.  Yes, while I was shivering underneath enough blankets to build a three story house snakes all over Tasmania had been flicking their tongues out in irritation at the uncharacteristic warmth.  This meant that they hadn't been able to hibernate which, to be fair, is pretty much the only way to get through Winter in Tasmania.  My correspondent swears by it.  The lack of a season's worth of restful sleep has made the snakes hungry and irritable but also very slow.  That seems to be a bad combination for the snake, they're terribly hungry but unless something actually walks into their open mouth and dies of heart failure they're unlikely to get a decent meal.  None of which would have stopped the snake from sluggishly biting my correspondent to death if she hadn't been somewhat more alert than usual.

Fortunately for my correspondent, and sobriety challenged bushwalkers all over the Apple Isle, things will improve.  As the sun returns and things get warmer the snakes will get quicker, find something to eat and then start taking more care to get out of the way of humans stumbling through the bush.  In the meantime bushwalkers are advised to wear gaiters, sturdy boots and, oh yes, look where they're damn well going.

Incidentally at the top of this blog entry I mentioned a fuzzy toy puffin.  This isn't a gift for a friend's child.  It will have to be prised from my cold dead hands.