I was hanging out the washing the day I came face to face with a brown snake.

I knew snakes lived around my place, but until that day some five years ago this was the first material sighting of one.

I grew up with my mother telling me to beware of snakes but none were ever seen apart from the one occasion when mum came in one morning to say there was a snake skin in the chook house.

Behind my house, there is a creek, though more of a water course than a running creek but I am aware that there are snakes there.

On this particular day, the snake was about three feet from me, sitting in the grass sunning itself. It would have been about five feet long and being a brown snake, I knew it was a deadly one.

I made a hasty retreat and summoned a neighbour who was more bush savvy than I was.

We concluded the snake had to go. So, he decided the kill the thing but any attempt resulted in the snake being more aware of us than we realized and it could move faster than we anticipated.

During the day with us looking with concern to the area, we saw the snake disappear into I learned the worst thing you can do is obstruct their line of retreat. This was made more difficult as we weren’t certain from which direction it had come though the creek direction was a favoured option.

It made a hasty retreat up under our laundry and so to add its escape I put the hose on under the laundry as I’d read that would often force them to move on.

The snake did move, I know it did as my neighbour on the other side came in to tell me the snake was in his yard.

Needless to say, the snake did get away that day, but a few weeks later we found it and one of my neighbour’s dog dead in his yard. It appears the snake came around again and was confronted by the dog but in the tussle that ensured the snake inflicted a fatal bite on the dog but the dog also managed to kill the snake.

Since that say, I have seen only one other snake, a big six-footer, sliding its way across my yard as it headed back to the creek. Chances are it’s been coming into my yard for a long time, and as the snake catching lady told me, it is most likely more aware of me then I am of him.

Written for: https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2018/10/28/sunday-writing-prompt-encounters-with-nature-october-28th/