We had an unexpected guest today.
Two weeks out from winter is not exactly when you’d expect to see wild diamond pythons but this guy showed up in our backyard today anyway and narrowly missed being a snack for my mum’s dogs. Our neighbours are clearing some overgrown trees and plants from their boundary fence, and we think he must have been hibernating in one of the trees that got cut down. My partner and I spotted him and pulled mum’s dogs away, while mum (aka the hand he has a death-grip on in these photos) caught him and relocated him down by the river, well away from the area being cleared.
I’m definitely adding “only one in the family with snake handling and catching experience despite owning dogs with no self-preservation instincts” as another reason why I need an off-road power wheelchair when I talk to the NDIS - the only reason I didn’t go get him myself was because I couldn’t get through the grass due to the rain making the ground too soft for my wheelchair. Mum’s got a rather impressive bruise from this and I don’t want to risk her or my partner getting hurt when I’m more equipped to be the one doing the relocation.
ID 1: a photo of a diamond python, a mostly dark brown snake with pale yellow spots on every scale of varying sizes with a broad head, and a cream-coloured underbelly. It is coiled around the arm of a woman wearing a teal shirt with her thumb on the back of its head. /end ID 1
ID 2: a photo of the same snake from a slightly different angle. /End ID 2
ID 3: a photo of the python climbing a broken tree /End ID 3
