Snail mail

 

We have a new resident in our house on the plateau, a bearded dragon called Haku. As my daughter’s partner’s mum (you’ll be able to work it out) owns a large snake, I suppose I can count myself lucky that our reptile is only a lizard. It’s about a foot and a half long, most of it tail, and coloured tan and whitish; its beard is not very noticeable. Apart from its overall reptile creepiness, the oddest thing about it is two holes, one on each side of its head, which are apparently how it hears. But as I got this information from a five-year-old I’m not entirely sure of its veracity.

I have had a loathing for reptiles, particularly snakes, since childhood. In those days, I spent a lot of time roaming through a wonderful 1947 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica which devoted an entire page to coloured pictures of world snakes. I would turn this page by holding it by the tiniest bit of its edge, as if the images might wake up and see me off. And I’ve told you before about the blue-tongued lizard in our garden in Pymble with its hateful flickering blue tongue which kept me in the house for weeks.

The closest I ever came to real live snakes in the wild was the archaeological dig I went on at the end of my first year at university. Our dig was at a large rock shelter in the national park south of Sydney and we established a campsite there living in eight-person army tents. (I became completely adept at dressing and undressing inside a sleeping bag, a skill I have regrettably not needed again!) We were surrounded by bush which was quite dense in the height of summer. Our route from the tents to the rock shelter up the hill was reasonably clear, but there was bush around us elsewhere so trips to the latrine, which we dug ourselves, were somewhat fraught with danger. These trips, by the way, included our carrying with us massive containers, one full of creosote and other of lavender water, to sanitise the trenches. But it was trips through rather dense bush to other smaller rock shelters around us that was the most fraught with potential danger. Fortunately one of the blokes on the dig reassured me that the snakes were more afraid of me than I was of them and as long as I trampled loudly as I progressed and always stepped onto logs and not over them (snakes liked sunning themselves on the tracks) I would be safe. He was right. While I never conquered my fear I was at least able to march through the bush without screeching.

My other confrontation with reptiles occurred in New Guinea where I had gone in the 1960s with a university group to study the elections as New Guinea hauled itself into the modern world. Our small sub-group of four from Sydney University were sent to Rabaul, a lovely town then but tragically much later destroyed by volcanic eruption. We lived in the Methodist Mission – the reason for which escapes me – and we developed a nodding relationship with rather sweet little geckoes. They would climb the walls to the ceiling at night-time and need the warmth of the morning sun to start moving again. I didn’t love them, but they were reasonably inoffensive.

The reason I’ve called this blog Snail Mail, however, is because we have snails which live in our mailbox. Ok, I know snails aren’t reptiles, but I think they have the same level of creepiness and when you put your hand in to collect the mail there’s a very good chance you’ll fish out a snail too. And the snails appear to love paper. If you don’t take out your mail every day or so then there won’t be much of it left.

So here I am in my dotage being required to live in close proximity to a reptile. Along with the snails, the dog, the cockatoos, the kookaburras, the lorikeets, the pantry moths and the granddaddy cockroaches, I’ve really got more wildlife than I care for.

 

Quote of the week from Chambers Dictionary of Modern Quotations:

General Charles De Gaulle: “How can you govern a country which produces 246 different kinds of cheese?”