Hi, I’m Meryl. I live on the outskirts of a country town called Roma in Outback Queensland. Between my family, the farm, running an ecological consulting business, ecotour business, and community interests, life is never boring. This is the beginning of my Blog, as I aim to share with you weekly some of the day to day adventures of my life.
Meet Mitch
While I prefer not to look back, I have to tell this story: After picking the kids up from school one of my sons (in bare feet) and I were throwing a few hay bales in a trailer to take to the local Fete for part of an Animal Nursery I was organising.
Suddenly Mitch, my son, yelled out “SNAKE!!”. A big brown was in the hay bales. Being ecologists and caring for all kinds of critters we are often called upon to catch (using a snake bag and hook) and relocate the snakes away from homes. Well not me exactly – I arrange for someone else to go and do this as much as I can. While I’m not scared of snakes, my left hand, which is the one I use to hold the snake bag is not as strong as it used to be following a bad break from a horse accident (a story for another day). When the snakes are big and heavy (as this one was), I find it hard to lift the bag with snake inside.
In the midst of trying to catch the snake the phone rang. I had to take the call from a clothing supplier, as I was putting an order in for uniforms for our town representative touch football teams; they needed to be finalised on that same day and in the next hour to ensure the order arrived in time for an upcoming carnival!
The dilemma……Snake or uniforms – what to do? What would you do? Well for me the uniforms won out (impacted too many people) however Mitch called Richard from work (Boobook Ecological Consultants) who came and caught the snake! Phew – Thanks Richard. Big sluggish Eastern Brown with a big lump in its belly – believe it might have just caught and eaten a rat or a small rabbit (both also found in the hay shed from time to time). Why sluggish? It’s a bit like when we as humans have a great big feed and feel a bit tired afterwards.
The Snake was relocated a ways out of town.
The moral of this story is: One should always wear closed in boots when throwing about hay bales, eh Mitch!
True Queensland Spirit in these two.
Also remember: The Outback is SAFE, particularly when you travel with BOOBOOK Ecologists on their ecotours. Snakes are part of our everyday life and are something to be respected, not to be frightened of.
By Meryl Eddie, BOOBOOK Ecotours, Roma Qld