…..it was because of a snake!

A snake I tell you!

Yesterday was Pudding’s party. It was good. There was a scary castle cake, which one friend (who happens to have been to all of our children’s parties for the last 8 years pretty much) said was the best I had ever done – quite an accomplishment, which I will post pictures of later.

I digress. The party was lovely. Everyone ate and drank and made merry.

It was a little chilly, slightly disappointing as on Saturday we had unseasonably warm weather of 27 °C. It would have been nice if it had continued but as it is still winter officially I shouldn’t complain. Anyhoo, I decided that Grub was getting cold and sent Poss inside to grab her a hoodie. Well, the hoodie, I noticed after I put it on her, was missing part of the zip.  I decided to pop into the laundry to check if it was caught in part of the machine or on the floor or something but as I entered our very glamourous outdoor galvanised iron shed laundry I stopped dead in my tracks. There, sunning itself in a shaft of sunlight coming through the sole window was something black and long and slithery.

Now, peoples, it is NOT snake season yet. Not only is it NOT snake season, we live in a very inner city suburb of Adelaide, it is not semi-rural. It is not what I would have pitctured as prime snake country. NOT AT ALL.

Nevertheless, it was most definitely a snake. There is a little gecko who lives happily in our laundry, I see him all of the time and this was not my friend the gecko. This was a long and slithery thing. Alright, it WAS a baby snake. Only as long as my forearm, if that, but it had no fucking legs people. It had no contours of body, it WAS A SNAKE!

Our best guess is that the overly warm weather on Saturday got the snakey all confused. We spent the morning cleaning out the laundry. Beefcake was planning to flush it out and “deal with it”. I’m not really sure what he was planning but I made it clear there would be no snake killing on my watch. This is despite my 77-year-old country-dwelling Nana telling me yesterday to just make sure I wear shoes when I put a load of washing  on so that I could stomp on it!

The laundry was empty, we checked all possible hidey holes (such as in near the motor of the chest freezer) but it had definetely left the building. It was funny because as Beefcake began to clear out the room he was telling me there was no way a snake could have gotten out via the back wall, “sealed and solid” he declared. This was until we moved the trunk, which is where the dryer sits. The snake had slithered behind that trunk as it beat it’s hasty exit and right in that corner we found a good sized snake door.

We have done our best to block up the gaps and large hole with timber and cement. We’re not convinced that it is snake proof but we’ve done all we could. The neighbours fence, which runs alongside the laundry, has a large jasmine climbing up it and a big bed of ferns, both of which have been home to rats (Rhubarb and Beefcake have seen them) so we are going to ask them to significantly trim or remove the plants so that the rats aren’t able to live in them.

I’m pretty sure that if I see the snake again I will be removing the bloody laundry building and putting something newer and less wildlife friendly in it’s place. At least it’s a good excuse to get Beefcake to do ALL the washing!