It's a Bright New Year!

Pardon our radio silence. We're back and ready for a new year, with new words ... hopefully more good than bad.

Bopping with Babushkas: No.16 in an Occasional Series entitled 'Harmless Hobbies for Mad Old Bags'

It's a jungle out there

.. and no I don't say this as a bad thing.

I have laboured to surround my house with jungle and finally  - Success! Some snaky friends have given my place the good habitat seal of approval.

Carpet python and carpet - Sussssing out the veranda ...

Here's the proof!

Yep,they're here alright, as the butcher birds and mickey birds often shout out to me: mooching along the verandah for a bit of gecko-gobbling, dropping unexpectedly from a palm frond, darting away when disturbed while having a sip at the frog pond (or snacking on a froglet?) I LOVE it that I'm not someone who's afraid of snakes and that they've chosen to live here!

Cat and dog are cautious in the garden, but they won't come to harm and nor will the snakes. The carpet python and tree snake that I have met are not poisonous, and my animals are trained to leave them be. They can share the garden as long as they like.

Here's a poem written by D. H. Lawrence on our relationship with snakes:

Snake

A snake came to my water-trough
On a hot, hot day, and I in pyjamas for the heat,
To drink there.

In the deep, strange-scented shade of the great dark carob-tree
I came down the steps with my pitcher
And must wait, must stand and wait, for there he was at the trough before me.

He reached down from a fissure in the earth-wall in the gloom
And trailed his yellow-brown slackness soft-bellied down, over the edge of
the stone trough
And rested his throat upon the stone bottom,
And where the water had dripped from the tap, in a small clearness,
He sipped with his straight mouth,
Softly drank through his straight gums, into his slack long body,
Silently.

Someone was before me at my water-trough,
And I, like a second comer, waiting.

He lifted his head from his drinking, as cattle do,
And looked at me vaguely, as drinking cattle do,
And flickered his two-forked tongue from his lips, and mused a moment,
And stooped and drank a little more,
Being earth-brown, earth-golden from the burning bowels of the earth
On the day of Sicilian July, with Etna smoking.
The voice of my education said to me
He must be killed,
For in Sicily the black, black snakes are innocent, the gold are venomous.

And voices in me said, If you were a man
You would take a stick and break him now, and finish him off.

But must I confess how I liked him,
How glad I was he had come like a guest in quiet, to drink at my water-trough
And depart peaceful, pacified, and thankless,
Into the burning bowels of this earth?

Was it cowardice, that I dared not kill him? Was it perversity, that I longed to talk to him?

Was it humility, to feel so honoured?
I felt so honoured.

And yet those voices:
If you were not afraid, you would kill him!

And truly I was afraid, I was most afraid, But even so, honoured still more
That he should seek my hospitality
From out the dark door of the secret earth.

He drank enough
And lifted his head, dreamily, as one who has drunken,
And flickered his tongue like a forked night on the air, so black,
Seeming to lick his lips,
And looked around like a god, unseeing, into the air,
And slowly turned his head,
And slowly, very slowly, as if thrice adream,
Proceeded to draw his slow length curving round
And climb again the broken bank of my wall-face.

And as he put his head into that dreadful hole,
And as he slowly drew up, snake-easing his shoulders, and entered farther,
A sort of horror, a sort of protest against his withdrawing into that horrid black hole,
Deliberately going into the blackness, and slowly drawing himself after,
Overcame me now his back was turned.

I looked round, I put down my pitcher,
I picked up a clumsy log
And threw it at the water-trough with a clatter.

I think it did not hit him,
But suddenly that part of him that was left behind convulsed in undignified haste.
Writhed like lightning, and was gone
Into the black hole, the earth-lipped fissure in the wall-front,
At which, in the intense still noon, I stared with fascination.

And immediately I regretted it.
I thought how paltry, how vulgar, what a mean act!
I despised myself and the voices of my accursed human education.

And I thought of the albatross
And I wished he would come back, my snake.

For he seemed to me again like a king,
Like a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld,
Now due to be crowned again.

And so, I missed my chance with one of the lords
Of life.
And I have something to expiate:
A pettiness.

Taormina, 1923

Lovely Weather for Frogs!

New life in all the wild weather in Queensland. At least the frogs are happy. (See the post for 29 December 2010.)

The tadpoles are enjoying their daily meal of boiled lettuce, and seem to be coming along nicely, although at different speeds.

Here's a shot of the tadpolarium, complete with toad-proofing and frog launchpad ...

... and here's a finished tree frog, now back happily snoozing somewhere in the showery garden

The Gift that Keeps On Giving

THE SMILING DONOR : Green Tree Frog, Litoria caerulea  Pavel German  © Australian Museum

here

Whew, that's Christmas over for another year - apart from the hungry cries of retailers who have forgotten which Dickens book they are supposed to be in. No, sorry,it's not 'Oliver Twist' (please sir I want some more) except that they forgot to say 'please',  but the message of Dickens' 'A Christmas Carol' that they should be keeping in mind.

If you look here you'll find a poem called December 26 about the things that Santa forgot, on the wonderful American Public Media Writer's Almanac page.

But this year my favourite present was a generous dollop of frog-spawn, kindly left for me on Christmas Eve by a visiting frog.

She must have known that my goldfish recently went to the Great Weedy Pond In The Sky ... already I can see the eggs changing from fullstops into tiny commas ...

...  and 'I think there's something in that for all of us, don't you?'

All I have to say about Christmas 2010

Holy Meerkat Family!

O.K. I was going to post a photo of a woman having hysterics in a shopping mall,
but I couldn't get anyone to come close enough to hold the camera.

So, anticipating next Year's New Year's resolutions, 
I have resolved to let my nice side shine through. 

So here's the sweetest thing you'll get from me until ... oh, quite some time, probably.

See more meerkats and make them your own at    http://www.etsy.com/shop/niftyknits 

Bats

A suitable subject, you might think, for a mad old bag. This picture shows a Black Flying Fox (pteropus alecto), otherwise known as the fruit bat.

These beautiful animals leave their safe roosts up in tall trees to visit gardens (see previous post) and street trees, where they will feed and squabble. They search for their food of fruit, blossoms and nectar, using sharp eyes and good sense of smell.

                                                            night walk

                                                           fruit bat beats the air

                                                          with drum skin wings

I often see a stream of them trailing high over the suburbs against the dusk sky when I'm out walking with the hound.

You can find out more about the bats of Brisbane and the people who care for them here: at Bat Care Brisbane.

Badger-fondling: No. 11 in an occasional series entitled 'Harmless Hobbies for Mad Old Bags'.

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