Trouble is we have lots of snakes - and there will be lots of baby browns soon. The cats will have to stay inside or in a run. Anyway, the paralysis ticks are as bad as the snakes. We keep it clear around the house to discourage them, but there is no way of completely eliminating either the snakes or the ticks.
sounds like you live in a very interesting spot.
we keep our cats indoors too... soon be building a cat run for them. we dont have many ticks here but snakes pop up from time to time apparently. We have just moved here so i havent seen any yet but my neighbour caught a bandy bandy the other week, wish it had been me finding it
Last edited by ving; 11-12-2009 at 3:13pm.
Yes, it's beautiful. We have a platypus in the creek, plus lots of huge local yabbies, plus azure kingfishers, plus mountain brushtails and ringtail possums, plus tawny frogmouths and the list goes on. A few snakes aren't going to put us off, particularly since they are little danger to us and the cats shouldn't go hunting anyway.
Actually it's a very considered response. I don't go out of my way to shoot a snake, if I see one in a paddock, I'll ignore it, but if one tries to take up residence in my yard, where the kids play, the dogs run, the chooks scratch, and we're more often or not in the garden, I'm not going to take the risk and hope it'll disappear by itself.
I used to work down at Roseberry, which isn't too far from you. I saw a few snakes there, but never too many around town. Fortunately the ozzie snakes are very shy, which is why so few people ever get bitten by them. I don't think you should kill them, but I can understand your nervousness with kids. I would have thought a 12g might be a bit dodgy in town.
Sorry, I just read your location and it said "downtown Yolla". Sounds a bit like my place, just colder.
The head scale patterns are identical to Cryptophis nigrescens (small eyed snake) but without a full scale count of the whole body and absence of some silly bugger to sit and scratch it's tummy while that's done:-
http://www.snakecatchers.com.au/Small-eyed_snake.html should get you some fairly good of information.
Colour variations in snakes now due to habitat changes and urban spread is making it harder and harder to identify snakes quickly. One could easily mistake these fellows for the more docile red bellied black.
The small eyed snake isn't particularly common but can be an agro little fella and a bite can be fatal.
Martin
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Martin
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I doubt that it's a black as it is a long way from the creek. Also, it seems a little too big for a baby from this season and maybe too small for last season. So my bet is a small eyed snake. Anyway, I moved it on to the rock wall. Hopefully it will stay there with its mates (I'm sure its got some).
We have a similar situation here, rock wall and banana farm to the north, with lots of browns and pythons (love those). Our 5 cats have their cattery in the garden and I have just netted in the front upstairs verandah. They never go outside (unrestricted). Raymond, the youngest, has caught small snakes in the cattery though and brought them inside.
Odille
“Can't keep my eyes from the circling sky”
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Lmao xD
When I was young and lived in Malaysia, we use to live in Medium-rise condomiuns, and where we lived we had a forest backed onto us. Back then though Damansara Heights was mostly Jungle.
I use to catch the 6.30am bus to school,my mom would take me down to the bus stop, and several mornings we came across a Cobra on the way, we didn't bother the cobra, and the cobra didn't bother us. Probably because It had a mouse for breakfast...