BINDON'S LORE with BINDON THE BUSHIE
Rampant Reptiles
J
im had worked in the herpetological department of a State Museum, in other words he was always a bit snaky.
Now, I can take snakes or leave them mostly the latter and at a fast rate. In fact I was once accused (when only wearing thongs on my feet) of running so fast that I was on top of the scrub instead of on the ground when I met an aggressive brown Joe Blake on a bush track. Jim, on the other hand, strolled around on his bush block in a quiet corner of north Queensland's Daintree clad in bare feet and not much more. Every now and then he encountered some form of reptilian visitor and picking it up and draping it around his neck, he escorted it away from the block without much comment but he sometimes kept them for a day or two to observe their creature habits. As Bob and I lounged about on the upstairs veranda of his unfinished house and forced down pannikins of Jim's mediocre red wine, he explained why there was a huge Emerald Scrub Python coiled up in a large glass tank downstairs. The snake was waiting for a trip out to another bloke's place where things were quieter and there was no resident cockatoo or intolerant wife. As he said this I knew that there was a story coming up so I topped up our wines and sat back. Bob and I leaned back on our four-gallon drums sipping the hot wine, while Jim started to explain why he had a large chunk of Elastoplast stuck on the side of his left hand. It was all because of Elmer. About a metre of water pipe welded upright on to an old plough disc and a tee-piece holding a couple more pieces of pipe was the home of Jim's cockatoo named Elmer, a pet since childhood. Elmer had two tins attached to
Reprint from Edition 59, Winter 2006
his perch, one that held water and the other sunflower seeds. During daylight hours, he wandered free around the yard and in the downstairs kitchen, bathroom and laundry of the typical two-storey Queensland house - just a little bit unfinished. But at night, a thin chain around his leg attached him to a ring on the central pole of the perch to keep him out of trouble and he was placed on a pad of newspaper in one corner of the kitchen. It seems that two nights previously, Jim and his wife Jenny were asleep in the upstairs bedroom when Jenny was awoken by Elmer screeching blue murder - or in this case attempted murder. Jim was sleeping heavily beside her, because he had been testing the wine that he was going to share with us before we arrived, like any good host would. Eventually he woke up when Jenny's kicking reached atomic proportions. Using simple words uttered very convincingly she directed Jim to proceed downstairs and "see what's making your bloody parrot squawk!" Bleary-eyed and stark naked, Jim staggered down and found about a quarter of a big Scrub Python twined around the vertical post of Elmer's stand. Scrub Pythons are reputedly Australia's longest and biggest snake, and after he was able to be measured, this one proved to be more than six metres long, which is one big snake. When he turned on the feeble six volt light, Jim saw a lengthy bit of snake still on the kitchen floor and the bit with the head on it was level with Elmer's and was obviously thinking of a late supper. Elmer was on the absolute end of his perch, chain stretched tight. Every time the snake moved, Elmer fluttered up to the end of the Western 4W Driver #122 |
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