Chance meetings

Birth is a wondrous thing: especially when witnessed without warning.

Last weekend we were home and clearing up the middle paddock – slashing, digging raised planting beds, etc., - and decided to move the Red-Bellied Hatchery before it was squashed under the wheels of Izzy, our tractor.  Looking gingerly into the tyres I saw one of the eggs hatching and a head slowly moving about.  Strange head though.  Didn’t have the shape of a snake’s head.  And it wasn’t.

I picked it up, helped free it from the shell and it lay there, in all it’s lizard-like glory, gathering heat from my hand and eyeing me suspiciously.  It didn’t look like the head shape of a Goanna but more resembled a Water Dragon.  These Dragons love our riparian zone areas and bask unashamedly in the sunshine until disturbed.  Then they rise up on their hind legs and scamper comically for cover, head-back like the runner Eric Liddell out of the film Chariots of Fire.  I did have an adult version on my shoulder a year or two back.  He/she/it was dormant due to the late Autumn cold, had big claws and was remarkably heavy.  Anyway, we couldn’t keep the hatchling or his brothers/sisters – the vivarium would need to be large and we’d need a licence to keep aussie wildlife.

Physignathus lesueurii lesueurii, the Eastern Water Dragon

Back in the home paddock I was pottering about trying to prepare the beds for a few weeks absence.  We’ve a few tall chilli bushes in pots.  Standing next to the chilli I looked closely and there, waving its body backward and forward, was the most inquisitive tree snake!  NOT venomous, but big-eyed and keen to slither onto my arm and up to my shoulders.  Kik was enthralled.  The chilli must be on its territory as no matter where we placed it down it tracked itself back to the trestle where the plant was.  Another resident of a country we never get to see when living in Sydney.



The Green Tree Snake, Dendrelaphis punctulata

Roll on the Easter break.