A Spitting Cobra shooting venom
A “snake yarn”, according to The Australian National Dictionary, is “a tall story. The term is derived from the fact that stories about encounters with snakes characteristically involve exaggeration”.
In my experience, the best bush yarns nearly always involve a little exaggeration, and I love bush yarns. In particular, I love a snake yarn and have heard (and told) some good ones over the years. One or two of these might be regarded as ‘marginally tall stories’, but in my view that does not diminish their interest or enjoyment.
The snake stories in Scottish forester Donald MacIntosh’s book Travels in a White Man’s Grave are a good example. The book is a lively and often amusing account of his real-life experiences working in the forests of Nigeria in the years after World War II. There is a whole chapter about snakes, and the stories are credible, if hair-raising.
For one thing, MacIntosh is respectful of snakes, recognizing their right to live on the planet. But he is well-aware of, and shares, the fear and hatred most people have for them. He writes:
… [the snake’s] defense mechanism is of such sophisticated and horrifying effectiveness as to make them the most feared of all the earth’s creatures. Snakes have been sending shivers up and down our collective spines since time immemorial. The very thought of their bite so terrifies us that, even if their venom doesn’t kill us, there is a very good chance that the shock of being bitten by them will do the trick.
I feel just like that. In a lifetime of working in and around the Australian bush, from one end of the country to the other, I have encountered many snakes and have never been able to conquer the jolt of alarm that shudders through me every time a snake crosses my path. Luckily the Perth suburb in which we live seems to be snake-free, but it is a different matter up on our little property on the Avon River at Gwambygine. I step lively (and noisily) whenever I am on foot amongst our trees, or in the long grass down by the river.
Australia is home to a great many deadly snakes, and snake stories are part of the culture and repertoire of every bushman. I’ll come to these in a moment but I would first like to mention one of Donald MacIntosh’s snake stories from his days in the jungles of Nigeria. This concerns the Spitting Cobra (pictured above). The story made a deep impression on me:
For my money … the most frightful snakes in the whole of the rainforest are the cobras … Cobras are long, thin and agile. They can reach a length of [two metres] and I have, on occasion, encountered cobras a good deal longer than that. Only two types of this extremely venomous reptile are to be commonly found in the vicinity of the rainforest - the black cobra and the spitting cobra. While both do much of their hunting on the ground, they are adept at climbing trees in search of young birds and eggs, and they are both expert swimmers.
[The spitting cobra], possibly the most curious snake in the world, belongs to this group … and was abundant in the Africa of my youth. This remarkable reptile - slate-grey to black in colour, with a vivid salmon-pink to dark-red throat — is unique in that it has the poison apertures at the front of its fangs, rather than at the tip of them as in other snakes. Thus, while it can employ its fangs in the normal way by striking and simultaneously injecting its venom into the bloodstream of its prey, it can also use them to spray twin jets of venom into the face of a potential foe. This is a purely defensive reaction, but it is a very effective one. When the spray of poison hits the eyes, it causes excruciating pain and, if not rapidly treated, can cause permanent blindness. The cobra’s venom is also much more potent than that of most other venomous snakes and, as it can be quite aggressive during the breeding season, this fast and active reptile is one to be avoided at all costs.
They are remarkably accurate when ‘spitting’ their venom. I was watching a worker sorting out a pile of planks in a timber yard one day when he flushed a small cobra of perhaps [one metre] in length from the bottom of the stack. Without hesitation, it spat at him. On this occasion, I was lucky enough to be in such a position as to be able to see the spray of clear venom glittering in the sun as it sped to its target. This time, the intended victim was lucky; the charge struck him harmlessly on the chin and mouth, just missing his eyes. A rough calculation by me afterwards indicated that this small cobra had been able to direct its jet of venom a distance of [more than 2 m]. It is reasonable to assume that a full-grown cobra would be devastatingly accurate at a much greater range.
In the absence of proper medicinal eyewashes, bathing the affected part with milk or water is the normal procedure when one’s eyes have been on the receiving end of a spitting cobra’s attentions. There are other, less orthodox, methods. I was watching my survey crew at work clearing some scrub in the middle of the forest one hot day at the beginning of the rainy season. Standing by my side was an old black hunting friend. As we chatted together, a large cobra reared high up out of the undergrowth directly in front of the labourer next to us and spat right in his face. The lad dropped his machete and staggered back, screaming with pain and clapping both hands over his eyes. My companion sprang into action instantly, hurling instructions at the other workers. With one accord they pounced on the victim, throwing him to the ground and holding him there while the old hunter knelt by his head and urinated in his eyes.
I am not too familiar with the remedial properties of black man’s pee, but the treatment certainly worked in this case. When I called to see the victim later that evening, he was sitting in front of his hut drinking palm wine and singing ribald songs with the best of them, little the worse for his experience.
I am always happy to know that the spitting cobra does not occur in Australia, and after reading the above, I resolved never to visit the rainforests of Nigeria, at least not without a pair of industrial-strength safety goggles plus full plastic face shield, worn at all times.
On the other hand, I have had several up-close and personal encounters with venomous snakes. The three most deadly in south-west Western Australia, where I mostly worked, are the tiger snake, the death adder and the dugite. Of these the tiger snake is the most fearsome, as it will come at you and strike, rather than slither away if disturbed. They are a highly territorial animal, and any living thing that trespasses on their territory seems to be fair game. Down in the south where every wetland or granite outcrop has a family of tiger snakes, they cause havoc with farm and pet dogs. My brother has lost two fine sheep dogs to tiger snakes on his property near Denmark.
Tiger tales
The two encounters I had with tiger snakes in the karri forest could both have been the end of me. To this day I appreciate how lucky I was to survive. The first occurred when ...
… I was having a pleasant ride on my old Triumph motorcycle down along the Burma Road out past Gloucester Tree. It was a lovely sunny day, the first warmth of spring. Rounding a curve in the road I suddenly saw a 2-metre long tiger snake lying right across my path. It could not be avoided and there was no time to stop, so I lifted my feet and drove over it. The snake stuck up at me, but missed. Then, in the stress of the moment I lost control and veered off into the bush, where the bike fell on top of me. It was a big, heavy old bike and I was pinned. Expecting the tiger snake to seek me out and deal with me, desperation gave me super-human strength. I extricated myself, picked up a stick and prepared to defend against a coming attack.
But I did not see the snake again. It must have survived being run over, as it was gone when I managed to get the motorbike back on the road. Chugging home, still shaking, I replayed another version of the incident in my mind. This was the one where my body was eventually found pinned under the motorbike in the bush, my blood stream full of tiger snake venom and my face twisted into a rictus of agony.
The other occasion was down on the Lower Shannon Road in the early 1970s. I had stopped the car and got out to walk up the hill to look at something in the forest there, and in crossing the table drain at the edge of the road, I trod on a tiger snake. It had been asleep in the leaves. I felt its muscular body squirm, and then I instantly took off in a mighty, world-record-breaking bound that took me back onto the road. The snake must have been surprised, because I saw it rear up and look around for someone to bite. But by then I was back in the car with all windows up and doors locked. To this day the feeling of that squirming snake remains in the memory of my left instep. I feel it now as I write these words.
I did have one other interaction with tiger snakes, but strangely this one was completely benign. On this occasion I was accompanying a small team of wildlife scientists who were studying the sea lions which basked on the beach at Carnac Island, a nature reserve about 15 km from Fremantle off the west coast. As well as being a resting area for sea lions, and a haven for millions of sea birds, the island is heaving with tiger snakes. One estimate is that there are probably more than 400 tiger snakes living on this 19-ha island. On the day I spent there I must have seen about 100 of them. Fortunately, the Carnac Island tigers are more docile than those on the mainland, as they are very well-fed (on the abundant sea-bird chicks and eggs). Also, many of them are blind, having had their eyes pecked out by seagulls defending their nests. All the snakes I saw that day were curled up, apparently sleeping. None took the slightest notice of me as I walked across the island from one beach to the other and back. It goes without saying that I was very careful about where I put my feet, and my body was poised like a steel spring for another world-record-breaking backwards leap. It was one of the most unsettling days I have ever spent in the field, and was not one I ever wanted to repeat.
Tiger snake with its characteristic yellow underbelly
By the way, there is an interesting story about the tiger snakes on Carnac Island. Legend has it that the island was snake-free up until 1930. At that time there was a Goanna Oil salesman and reptile showman in Perth named Rocky Vane. He astounded audiences with an act that involved handling highly venomous snakes, including tigers. However, both his wife (who acted as his assistant on stage) and her replacement assistant were bitten and died. The showman came before the court, and the magistrate ordered that the show be cancelled. Vane then disposed of his snakes by freeing them on Carnac Island. There is some controversy about the Rocky Vane story, but it is supported by WA’s top wildlife scientist Andrew Burbidge, whose views I always respect. Whatever the truth of the matter, biologists are now fascinated to note that, thanks to inbreeding, diet and environmental pressures, the snakes on the island are different from those on the mainland, including behavioral differences such as (I was happy to observe), being more docile.
Another friend who noted the placid nature of the tiger snakes on Carnac Island was wildlife scientist Ian Abbott. He recalled:
I camped on Carnac Island several times in the 1970s while I was studying the island’s birdlife. I knew the snakes were there, that I’d be camping alone for one week at a time, with no wireless or phone contact available. But when you are young (late 20s) you regard yourself as resilient, and game to try anything! However, I always took great care. On a small island like Carnac there was no need to hurry, and I carried an aluminium pole just in case I found myself in a sticky situation (such as a snake sunbathing atop a bush). I nearly trod on one once, the closest I ever came to a problem.
It was a different story for our former National Parks Director Chris Haynes who worked for a while as a forester in the pine forests of south-eastern South Australia. “This was” Chris said, “the world capital of the tiger snake”. He survived many near-misses. However, on one occasion his knowledge of the reptile enabled him to cleverly short-circuit an industrial problem. The forestry gang had threatened to go on strike, complaining that the pine pruning job they had been given was too dangerous. As they demonstrated to Chris, nearly every tree contained a tiger snake, waiting to strike out at, and administer venom to the unwary pruner. Chris easily dealt with the issue. The pruning job was postponed to winter when he knew that the tiger snakes in that part of the world go into hibernation.
Harry Butler
An amusing memory of an encounter with a tiger snake was the time I was hosting the famous naturalist Harry Butler. He was making a program on the wildlife of the karri forest for his popular TV show Harry Butler in the Wild, and as the local forester I had the job of looking after him and his team. In one scene, Harry is driving along a forest track when he spots an enormous tiger snake on the road ahead. Harry leaps from his Land Rover, and without hesitation picks up the tiger snake by the tip of its tail with his bare hand and holds it at arm’s length, the snake writhing about. “Look and this beautiful animal!” he exclaims with Harry Butlerish enthusiasm. He then examines the angry reptile and gives a detailed run-down on its interesting life-style and aggressive personality. It all comes across as a marvellous and brave bit of bushmanship.
However, what I saw on the day, and what the viewer later saw on TV were two different things. Harry had caught the tiger snake the day before (he was very good at that), placed it in a sack and then put the sack in the fridge (set on cool) in the back of his Land Rover overnight. Then just before the episode was filmed, the snake was removed from the fridge, thawed out and laid across the road. It was coming out of its hibernation when Harry picked it up but was still half-dopey.
It was a bit of TV trickery, I admit, but the story Harry put over about the tiger snake was educational, interesting and exciting, and this is what the viewers at home wanted, as Harry well-knew. He had also minimised the risk of being bitten on camera. This might have made even more interesting television, if not from Harry’s point of view.
This is not to discount Harry Butler’s intimate knowledge of snakes and how to handle them. The famous forest ecologist Per Christensen has a story about this in his memoirs, recounting the time he spent with Harry on biological surveys in the southern forests:
Harry’s forte was reptiles, especially snakes. He loved nothing better than to demonstrate how to catch a snake. We were to encounter several snakes over the following weeks … and whenever we came across one, Harry moved swiftly and confidently, snatching the snake by the tail and lifting it until its head was off the ground. Held in this manner a snake is helpless, he explained, it is unable to get its head up to bite you, so long as you stop it climbing up itself, which you can do simply by giving it an occasional wriggle. He added a note of caution, the technique does not work with death adders as they are able to flick over backwards and strike you if you try to grasp them by the tail.
Once we sighted a dugite on open ground and Harry immediately whipped off his battered hat and flung it down in front of the snake. This caused the snake to be distracted and gave Harry time to close in and grab it up by the tail. Speed and confidence are essential in catching snakes, he explained. Hesitate and you are asking for trouble, snakes generally try to escape but if cornered they will react fast and strike in self-defense.
I have never tried to pick up a snake, and probably will not. Not will I attempt the snake-killing technique of my grandfather James Underwood. My father told me that he witnessed James on two occasions deal with a deadly snake that had come into the horse stables on their farm at Waddy Forest. Harry Butler-like, he would also throw something to distract the snake, then grasp it by the tail, whirl it around his head and crack it like a stock whip. This broke the snake’s back, killing it instantly.
I have often wondered about this. It smacks a little of bravado. A blow with a long-handled spade would have been just as effective, although perhaps less dramatic.
King Browns
Like the snake itself, snake yarns have many twists and turns. My mate Bill Fitzgerald spent most of his life on Murrum sheep station in the mulga country near Mt Magnet. Here snakes are abundant, mostly the very deadly King Browns. Legend has it that the bite of this snake is invariably fatal … but there have been exceptions.
My mother was bitten by a Brown [Bill told me once]. She had gone outside in the dark to hang some washing on the clothesline and had not taken a torch. The torch was essential at night to avoid the snakes that would come into the homestead and the sheds from the bush after dark to catch mice and drink from the horse troughs or dog bowls. Mum disturbed a snake and it bit her on the leg. Dad and Charlie, the station overseer, performed the time-honoured “cut and suck” first aid. Dad cut and Charlie sucked – they did it this way because Charlie had false teeth, which he took out, while Dad had a few cavities in his teeth, and was concerned the poison might get into them. I was only a little boy then and can still remember watching all this enthralled and terrified, especially seeing Charlie spit the mixture of red blood and black poison into a basin. Mum was crook for a couple of days but recovered.
The King Brown, also known as the Mulga Snake – highly aggressive and very deadly.
I found this story incredible, until Bill topped it when he casually mentioned that the entire episode was repeated with another King Brown a few years later, his mother again being bitten on the leg at night in the homestead garden. Bill was away at boarding school on this occasion, but heard later how his father rushed her to the hospital at Mt Magnet where the anti-venene was administered. She survived that one as well, but took months to convalesce, and ever after suffered from pain in the leg of the second bite. Bill’s opinion was that the first bite had been from an immature adult, while the second had been from a “really big bastard”, capable of a massive injection of venom.
Bill took over Murrum Station after his Dad retired, and he and his wife Pat lived there for over forty years. During that time, King Brown snakes were part of their everyday life, frequently coming into the homestead or the garden, and needing to be despatched. Once the governess was bitten on the foot. Pat applied a tourniquet and rushed her into Magnet where she was given anti-venene, and then taken to Royal Perth Hospital by the Flying Doctor. She survived.
“Best of all”, Bill told me proudly, “it made the evening TV news”.
Pat has some good stories about snakes in the house in her memoir of station life, and the matter-of-fact way in which they dealt with them; it is astonishing to me that anyone could become blasé about such a situation, as she and Bill did.
Lenny Talbot
Possibly the most alarming snake story I ever heard was told to me by well-known forester and raconteur Lenny Talbot. Back in the 1950s Lenny worked for some time in the Northern Territory, including stints on Melville Island and at remote Aboriginal communities in Arnhem Land. Pythons are common in these areas and grow to an enormous size. The python is not venomous but kills by strangulation or crushing within its powerful coils. They have the knack of dislocating their jaws, and can devour relatively large animals, like rock wallabies, which they ingest whole. Having swallowed, the python then retreats to a quiet spot where the meal is slowly digested over a period of maybe a week or two.
Visiting a remote community in the Gulf country one day, Lenny was accompanied by a local man who, as they passed through the settlement, pointed to a young lad, a boy of maybe eight or nine years old. “That kid’s lucky to be alive” he said. “Why’s that?” asked Len. The following story was related to Len, who later told me:
It was a hot night, and the kid was sleeping outside on the veranda on a mattress. During the night, his mother thought she could hear a whimpering sound, so she crept out to investigate. Her son was sleeping on his back, one skinny little arm flung out. A huge python was in the process of ingesting this arm and had swallowed it up to about the boy’s elbow. He had not awoken, but must have been having a bad dream, influenced by events down on the arm, as he was keening and snivelling.
The mother well-knew that pythons have inward curving teeth, and they cannot be pulled off a partially-ingested meal. So she went and got the axe from the woodheap, calculated where her son’s hand and fingers might be, and then chopped the snake at the selected point, severing it with one clean blow. Her judgement was good. The snake died instantly, was slit open with a sharp knife, and the boy’s intact, but slimy arm extricated.
Len Talbot (now sadly no longer with us) had numerous snake yarns like this, all of them spine-chilling, and also some “good” crocodile stories from his days in the Territory. Like so many bushmen of his generation he had the gift of story-telling, riveting his audience. But I have to say that many of Len’s snake stories were not the sort you needed to hear just before leaving the campfire to crawl into the swag in some remote, probably snake-infested bush.
Rattlers
I have a snake-ingesting story of my own. Many years ago I was on a study trip in the US state of Idaho, being shown around by an officer of the Bureau of Land Management. We were in a 4WD and bumping over a rough bush track when my mate spotted something and braked to a halt. “You ever seen a rattler?” he asked. I replied that I had not, and did not want to see one, at least not in the wild. He laughed, and climbing out, said “This one won’t hurt you”.
By the side of the track was a rattlesnake, about a metre in length. Its tail was raised and was rattling, an eerie, disturbing sound. Its glittering eyes were fixed on us with an expression of hatred. But my friend was right, this snake was no threat to us - it was completely immobilised. It had been eating a small rodent of some sort when we disturbed it. The rodent’s hind legs and tail, still twitching, were all that could be seen, protruding obscenely from the rattler’s jaws. The rest was in behind the incurving fangs and halfway down the snake’s throat (if snakes have throats). We looked at the rattler for a few minutes, appreciating its powerlessness, before leaving it in peace to finish its meal.
By the way, the north American rattlesnake, contrary to its reputation, is not (I was told) a seriously venomous snake, not by Australian standards anyway. It got its reputation during the great western migrations of the wagon trains, when children, often barefoot, were walking beside the family wagon. When bitten, small children nearly always died. Adult humans, on the other hand, nearly always survive a rattlesnake bite, even in the days before modern snakebite treatment.
Dugites and death adders
Brian Cowcher was another old forester who was an accomplished yarn teller. I still smile when I remember a story of his about an encounter with a dugite in the jarrah forest.
I was walking through the bush one day and stepped up on a log about a metre high [said Brian]. Stepping off on the other side of the log I spotted a dugite, coiled but with head raised and looking straight at me. My trajectory meant that my foot would land right on it.
Before that moment I had never thought it would be possible to recover back to the upright position once I had passed 45 degrees on the way down. But the next thing I knew I was back standing up on the log, gazing down at the angry dugite. No professor of physics, or no Olympic gymnast, has ever been able to explain how I did it.
I was reminded of Brian’s story the one and only time I encountered a death adder. I was driving along the Brookton Highway, through the heart of the jarrah forest. I spotted a snake sunning itself on the bitumen up ahead and slowed down to have a look. There had been a time in my youth when I used to run over snakes and try to kill them – it was common practice in the bush – but over the years I had come to adopt a let-them-be attitude and gave them a wide berth. But this time I saw it was a death adder, and I had not previously seen one in the wild. Stopping the car about 30 metres away, I got out to have a closer look.
The death adder is a particularly ugly snake. It is short and fat, with a little whippy tail and a narrow, nasty-looking triangular head. I knew that they were very deadly, and did not approach closer than about 20 m away. Suddenly the snake sensed my presence. In an instant it shot into the surrounding bush, a blur of movement. It travelled about 15 metres in the merest flicker of an eyelid. “Jeepers” I thought, “if he had come at me, rather than going the other way, he would have been on me and sinking the fangs into my leg before I had time to move a muscle”.
I had no idea that any snake could move cross-country so rapidly, let alone a squat little one like the death adder. I checked later with one of my wildlife colleagues and he confirmed that snakes could be very fast. The sidewinder (a close relative of the rattlesnake), he said, had been measured as having moved at nearly 30 km/hr over a short distance. This is about twice as fast as I could run, even when I could run.
Pet snakes
I have known two people who had pet snakes. By this I mean real snakes, not those pencil-sized things you sometimes see inside a glass case. One of these was “Jungle Geoff” Stocker, a fellow-student at Forestry School. Jungle was one of those forestry students who have come up to university from a tough life on a hard-scrabble farm and in the bush and (superficially at least, he was actually a brilliant student) he came across as a rough bushy. He always wore a battered slouch hat and carried a large bush knife in a sheath on his belt. It was appropriate to this persona that he acquired a snake from somewhere and kept it as a pet in the student hostel. It lived in the box room, and every now and again Jungle would deliver it a mouse or some other morsel. Sometimes he took it for a walk, or rather a slither, in the grounds, or let it swim in the fishpond.
I am not sure what species of snake it was, but I noticed that it would coil around Jungle’s arm and give it an affectionate squeeze. Consulting those who were there at the time suggests it was a youngish carpet snake. I don’t think even Jungle Geoff would have played around with a venomous species.
This is the photo I took of Jungle Geoff’s pet snake in the grounds of Forestry House, 1962
I have no idea what happened to the snake when we left Canberra. Perhaps it was returned to the wild. Jungle himself had a distinguished career as a forest scientist and ended up Professor of Forest Ecology at the University of Papua New Guinea. I suspect he regarded PNG as heaven, as it is infested snakes, including some whose very names chill the blood, for example the ‘Papuan taipan’ and ‘the smooth-scaled New Guinea death adder’.
The other pet snake I came across belonged to Frank Gallagher. “Old Gal” as he was known, was an elderly Forest Ranger on the staff at Mundaring Weir when I was the district forester there. Gal’s beat was the Julimar Forest, a remote area of jarrah and wandoo bush about 100 km away to the north. Frank would camp there in a Livingston Hut during the week and go home to his wife and family on the weekend. His job at the Julimar was to police the local timber cutters, chat with the beekeepers, do a bit of burning in the winter, and generally mooch about patrolling.
Gal’s Livingston Hut at the Julimar. Also my departmental Land Cruiser,parked outside.
I used to visit Gal about once every three weeks to see if he was still alive, and I would stay overnight with him in his hut. The first time I did this, when we were sitting at the table eating our evening meal, I noticed an enormous snake coming down through a hole in the ceiling. I cried out in alarm, but Gal just smiled. “He’s my hut-mate” he said, “keeps the place free of mice and rats”. It was a carpet snake, the native python of the region, harmless to humans, but a skilful and deadly hunter of rodents, birds and rabbits. Its permanent abode was in the ceiling of Gal’s hut. It was particularly fond of chook eggs, with which Gal would indulge it now and again.
I never quite got used to this hut-mate, and didn’t like to think of it sliding silently down in the night to investigate the stranger in his hut.
The biggest snake I ever encountered was on a spring day in the Dryandra Forest. Ellen and I were heading out from our camp to explore a lovely area of mallet and powderbark forest when we came across (what I took to be) a small black log, right across the track. There was no way around. I stopped the car and got out to remove it, only to discover it was an enormous carpet snake, sleeping in the sunshine. It was at least three metres in length and considerably thicker than my arm. I tried to startle it into moving, but it must have been only recently out of hibernation, as it was completely soporific. In the end I found a long, forked stick and bit by bit levered him off the track, working from the tail end. It was astonishingly heavy … also strangely indifferent to my work. Thanks to my earlier experience with Old Gal’s hut mate and Jungle Geoff’s pet at Forestry School, I wasn’t frightened, but I did think about the crushing power of its coils and was glad that I was not a brush wallaby on his breakfast menu.
The Karratha snake man
It was probably a good thing that at the time of the incident with the Dryandra python I had not heard Tony Start’s snake yarns. Tony grew up in Africa and then spent much of his working life managing the national parks in the Pilbara and the Kimberley, and in wildlife research. Tony was a gifted naturalist, knew every plant, insect, bird and animal in the bush by its first name, and had no fear of snakes. Indeed, while he lived in Karratha he became the city’s “snake man” – the person who was called to remove deadly snakes from kitchens and backyards, a job he enjoyed. He always captured and bagged the snakes, however deadly, and released them into the bush far away from town, rather than killing them.
Once, Tony told me,
I was bitten by a small non-venomous snake while carrying out a wildlife survey on the Monte Bello Islands. It didn't bother me but somehow news got back to the regional office in Karratha that I had been bitten, and they assumed the worst. I was greeted on my arrival back in the office a few days later like someone who had risen from the grave.
Tony was not a man to observe the adage: “once bitten, twice shy”. He went on to tell how:
… the only bad bite I've had from a snake was on the Atherton Tablelands in Queensland. We were on long service leave and driving round Australia in a camper van. One evening we came across a huge olive python half-across a bush track. Not wanting to run over it I got out and nudged it with my toe to urge it to move on. When it didn't react, I bent down to pick it up and help it move off the track. In a flash it whipped around and bit me on my forearm. I was astonished at the power of its strike. It nearly bowled me over. My arm immediately began to swell and blood oozed from the punctures its teeth made. My wife and the kids screamed, certain I was about to die. I had a sore, bruised arm for a few days but nothing worse. The python also lived.
This story always comes to mind these days when I recall the cavalier way I moved the huge python off the track in Dryandra Forest … an episode that is listed in the category of my life’s experiences under the heading “Things I Would Not Have Done, Had I Knew Then, What I Know Now” (it is a very long list).
Eating snake
I have never eaten snake, but I did once share a nicely cooked bungarra and found it delicious. The Aborigines feared snakes, and killed them, but also ate them with relish. As was their normal culinary approach, snake cooking was rudimentary – the thing was simply thrown onto a bed of coals, turned once, and then skinned and demolished. Needless to say, they were well-aware that cooking denatured the poison in the snake’s venom.
I have seen recipes in obscure cookbooks for cooking snake, and one or two of them looked OK, at least the photograph of the finished product on the plate looked OK (for example, snake cutlets rolled in egg and breadcrumbs, deep fried in mutton fat and served with chips). However, I always found off-putting the process of catching the snake (or scraping-up road-kill), and then skinning and gutting it before cooking commenced, and have never given it a go.
If any of this makes you feel queasy, you might not want to read this book …
… as I did recently. It is entertaining and well-written, but I do not recommend it to the faint-hearted.
Anthony Bourdain is a chef and an adventurer, travelling the world, eating anything and everything and then “dining out” on his experiences through his books, TV programs and articles. At one point he is in Vietnam and determined to eat the ‘Specialty of the House’ (whatever it might be), in a famous restaurant in Saigon. I will let him tell the story:
l enter, sit down, and order a beer right away, steadying myself for what will probably be the most . . . unusual meal of my life so far.
A grinning waiter approaches, holding a wriggling sack. He opens it, gingerly reaches inside, and extracts a hissing, furious-looking four-foot-long cobra. As I’ve ordered the specialty of the house, I assume the staff is inured to the sight but when the cobra, laid on the floor and prodded with a hooked stick, raises its head and spreads its hood, the whole staff - waiters, busboys, and managers - everyone but my handler - steps back a few feet, giggling nervously. My handler, a nice young man in waiter’s black slacks and a white button-down shirt, has a sizable bandage on the back of his right hand, a feature that does not fill me with confidence as he lifts the snake with the stick and holds him over the table, the snake training its beady little eyes on me and trying to strike. I knock back the rest of my beer and try to stay cool while the cobra is allowed to slide around the floor for a while, lunging every few moments at the stick. The cobra handler is joined by an assistant with a metal dish, a small white cup, a pitcher of rice wine, and a pair of gardening shears. The two men pick up the cobra, fully extending him; the cobra handler holds him behind the jaws, while the assistant keeps him stretched just ahead of the tail. With his free hand, the handler takes the scissors, inserts a blade into the cobra’s chest, and snips out the heart, a rush of dark red blood spilling into the metal dish as he does so. Everyone is pleased. The waiters and busboys relax. The blood is poured into a glass and mixed with a little rice wine. And the heart, a Chiclet-sized oyster-like organ, still beating, is placed gently into the small white cup and offered to me.
It’s still pumping, a tiny pink-and-white object, moving up and down up and down at a regular pace in a small pool of blood at the bottom of the cup. I bring it to my lips, tilt my head back, and swallow. It’s like a little Olympia oyster - a hyperactive one. I give it one light chew, but the heart still beats . . . and beats . . . and beats. All the way down. The taste? Not much of one. My pulse is racing too much to notice. I take a long swig of rou tiet ran, the blood and wine mixture, enjoying it, not bad at all - like the juice from a rare roast beef - robust, but with just a slight hint of reptile. So far so good. I have eaten the live heart of a cobra. Linh is proud of me. Many, many sons. The floor staff grin, the girls giggle shyly. The handler and assistant are busily carving up the cobra. An enormous mass of snowy white snake tripes tumbles out of the cobra’s body cavity onto a plate, followed by a dribble of dark green bile.
‘This very good for you,’ says Linh as a waiter mixes the bile with some wine and presents me with a glass of ruou mat ran. It's a violent green color now, looking about as appetizing as the ….
That’s enough! There is another page and a half in this vein, in which we read how Bourdain eats the snake in its entirety, along with a side dish of what sounded like witchetty grubs … but I could not bring myself to copy it out for my readers.
I am a good trencherman but prefer to eat in the company of no snakes, even a cooked one, when dining. As a very minimum, a dish of baked beans on toast, sitting with my Everloving in a snake-free kitchen with a pet dog at my feet, is more to my taste.
And finally, a good snake story
My admired friend the famous forest scientist Joe Havel once told me a snake story with an unusual twist. Joe (now retired, but still active), was pruning fruit trees in his orchard one day when he failed to notice a tiger snake that was coiled up in the tree he was working on. The snake bit him on the forearm, injecting venom. Joe remained calm. Having killed the snake and double-checking its identity, he went inside and called Triple Zero. Soon an ambulance arrived, and he was taken to the Emergency Department of the nearby hospital. All good, you might think.
But at the hospital the doctor was not convinced Joe had identified the snake correctly and was not sure what anti-venene to inject. An argument ensued, with Joe maintaining it was a tiger snake, and the doctor saying it was more likely to be a dugite. By this time the snake venom was starting to do its work … but Joe (who can be very feisty when riled, to say nothing of when riled and suffering from snake bite) stuck to his guns. The tiger snake anti-venene was administered, and he soon recovered.
Apart from Joe surviving, why is this a good snake story? Well, before all this, Joe had been suffering from severe angina, his old arteries having become blocked over the years. He had been avoiding heart surgery (he was the carer for his wife Betty at the time), but knew it was inevitable. However, it turned out he didn’t need it. The tiger snake venom did the job for him. From the day after being bitten Joe suffered no further angina, his arteries now well and truly re-bored. “I had heard of snake venom being used in traditional Chinese medicine” Joe told me, “but never really believed it. I have now changed my mind.”
Had not Joe Havel been a man of impeccable honesty and integrity, I might have regarded all this as a tall tale, just another “snake yarn”. But I believed him, and in the end I went away thinking about the old proverb: “it’s an ill wind that does not blow somebody some good”.
Further reading:
Bourdain, Anthony (2002): A cook’s tour. New Edition.
Burbidge, Andrew (2024): The origin of Tiger Snakes on Carnac Island, Western Australia: an update. The Western Australian Naturalist, 33(3)
Christensen, Per (2022): Fire, Foxes and Feral Cats. Discoveries and adventures of a wildlife scientist in Western Australia. Hesperian Press, Victoria Park, WA.
Fitzgerald, Patricia (2021): My life at Murrum. Snap Print, Perth Western Australia
Haynes, Chris (1990): Tiger Tales. In : Echoes from the Forest. Dix Print, Perth Western Australia
MacIntosh, Donald (1998): Travels in the White Man’s Grave. Neil Wilson Publishing, Glascow
Storr, GM, LA Smith and RE Johnstone (1986): Snakes of Western Australia. WA Museum, Perth Western Australia
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