I made a post the other day about the fastest animals on the planet and in it mentioned snakes. You can see the post here. It sparked a comment-conversation between 
I mentioned something that happened to me a while back and said I'll do a post on it and figured that today is as good a day as any.
I've spent the last twenty years of my life in the property industry across the commercial, industrial, development and residential sectors. I don't sell anymore but back in 2012 a client of mine had a huge parcel of land he asked me to represent. It was massive, would be a lucrative deal and, considering the client was in Israel, I'd hardly have to speak with him. Sell the land G-dog, was his directive and it seems like a good plan.
[Stay with me y'all, I'm getting to the snake.]
The land was situated in a town to the west of my city on the Eyre Peninsula in the middle of nowhere; An eight and a half hour drive away, still in my State of South Australia, but a long way off. So I flew into the small town of Ceduna where I was met by a local real estate agent, the previous agent who was unable to sell the land, off we went to see the land.
The site was just out of town and we arrived in a few minutes to what looked like uneven land, covered in low bushes backed by huge sand dunes over which was the pristine, and shark infested waters of the Southern Ocean. All looked well.
We hopped out and, ever keen to be thorough, I began to wander about on the uneven ground. The lady who drove me there, I can't recall her name, hung back fifteen metres or so, I assumed because she didn't want to ruin her shoes. Fair enough too.
I'd gone about fifty metres when the ground collapsed beneath my right foot and I found my leg swallowed by a hole up to my knee.
[Here comes the snake part y'all.]
For a split second I was simply annoyed, but that turned to horror when I realised what was happening.
I'd fallen into a snake pit where a hibernating Eastern Brown snake, Australia's most deadly snake with the second most toxic venom in the world, was having a snooze, just minding it's business.
This is not an Eastern Brown Snake...I took it in Darwin and it's one of the only snake images I have so I decided to use it for this post.
I felt a thrashing against my lower leg, below my knee and on looking down saw the thick body of the snake roiling and thrashing in a bid to free itself. The snake was the diameter of my wrist, quite big...These snakes can grow to 2.4 metres in length (7.8 ft) and are fast and powerful.
I must have been pinning it's head with my foot because I didn't get bitten straight away. This was a good thing.
These snakes will sometimes dry bite meaning no venom is injected, it's a warning, or defensive, bite as such. But when provoked, or they are stepped on, their aggression-level raises and they will often strike several times.
I knew all of this of course and have always held a healthy respect for the Eastern Brown having seen many. I'm often in the bush and outback and when they present themselves I simply give them room to escape and it's all good...I'd never stepped on one before though, but knew it would be mad.
So there I was wondering if I should try and extricate my leg and what may happen when I do or stay there, wait for the snake to work free and then bite the fuck out of me. Hmm, choices choices.
I decided to opt for the extrication option.
The whole episode all took a matter of seconds from falling in to making the decision; I knew the longer I waited the more likely the bugger would break free and have the chance to strike.
My problem was that I was awkwardly placed with my left foot on ground level and my right deep in the hole to just over my knee; This inhibited my leverage, the leap I'd be capable of, but I knew I had to clear the hole in one go, and leap far enough that the snake had less chance to turn and feast on my delicious leg as it exited.
I braced and then...Leap!
I flew about 17 metres into the air and...OK, not really. I cleared the hole in one leap though, looking downwards for the snake as I did. I saw it bundle itself up really quickly now it was loose; It looked like a thick rope coiling and tying itself into a knot...Probably not a good example but that's what it looked like...It bundled up and just as I was landing to the right of the hole I saw it shoot off inside the hole, clearly some sort of tunnel scenario.
I bolted back the fifty metres to the vehicle and just stood there probably looking white as a ghost, not easy for me as I'm a delectable shade of mocha, and with my heart beating fast.
I'd survived my encounter and later in conversation, once my heart rate had returned to normal, I found out from the local lady that for the last 100 years this location had been used as the unofficial dumping site by the whole town. Car bodies, drums, general rubbish, metal and building scrap...It was all dumped here then bulldozed over to look sort of smooth. The place must have been riddled with snake pits. Thanks for the waring lady.
I never ended up taking the work; I valued the site of course, gave the figure of a few million dollars to the owner who wanted double, of course, but I priced myself out of the work; You see, a site like that would require far too much remediation to make development viable and considering that, and the owners expectation of price, it simply wasn't worth my while. I got nothing for the deal at all...Except nightmares.
I had nightmares about that snake for a couple months, even writing this post makes me shudder and I can still feel the snake thrashing on my lower leg.
I've done some pretty dangerous things in my day, been in a lot of bad situations, but this stepped on a bloody snake episode is one that freaked me out completely. I was lucky not to get bitten and whilst I would probably has survived through the fact we were close to town and the little hospital there, it still gave me the creeps.
You know, more people die from honey bee stings in Australia than from Eastern Brown Snake bites...But I wasn't willing to test the theory in the hole that day. I'm glad I got away with it, and am not keen to repeat the experience.
So, that's my snake tale...Do you have a brush with a wild animal story for me? If so drop your comment below.
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Be well
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