Close encounter

By Tracy

No photo this time, because I was taken unawares:

I just now walked out to put some material in the recycling bin, and two feet in front of me, on our verandah, was a huge gwardar (western brown snake).

My heart is still thumping. It was beautiful, but the size of it was overwhelming, and the fact that it was just outside the front door. If you've never met one, you can read about this lovely but dangerous creature here.

It swished along the line where the wall meets the floor and disappeared behind the recycling bin.

(W. said when she opened the front door this morning, a big bungarra was sitting there! Two close encounters in one morning. The bungarra, however, is not venomous.)

It reminds me how visibly cyclical our life is here -- last November we had similar encounters.