Monday, April 30, 2007

Renovations & inhabitants

Many many years ago, we had what sounded like a herd of elephants living in our roof. Okay, they were rats, but it seemed that, the more ratsak we provided, the more they came and partied. It really sounded like a ratty rave party. Then..one day...no more. Silence. My husband had to go into the roof to do something, and found what looked to be the Taj Mahal of all rats nests. Inside this 'taj mahal' was a large skin...recently shed by one obviously very well fed snake.
We would occasionally see the odd skin shed over summer, here and there, but never got to see the shedder. Until one Melbourne Cup night about 3 years ago - I had been at a party, drinking far too much champagne, and was back at home outside in the barbeque area whilst husband was cooking dinner..it was dusky...I looked at the lattice beside our gate and saw this thing that looked like an exotic sea slug...it was just a mere portion of our diamond python, now about 6 foot long, winding her way back into her lair. She has since been affectionately known as 'diamante'.
The only time I have ever been upset with her was when I did have two cute little tree frogs that lived in the wisteria (unfortunately, on Diamante's nightly route) - one day, I found a skin winding through the wisteria, but no frogs. Clearly they had just been too much for her skin to take! LOL.
Anyhow, what does this have with renovations? Well, we're getting a new roof. We had warned the builder about Diamante, but hadn't seen her of late, and she wasn't in her usual lair, so we had assumed the worst - she must be getting on in years now.
Well, the builder was up in the roof, inspecting the trusses this morning, and discovered one Diamante, fast asleep, curled up high in the roof. Wires have said to just let her be, she'll apparently just remove herself from the fracas and return once the builders have finished! Cute.

Oh...just for Sue...got down the beach this morning! Yay :-) NOT an inch of hard sand though, all soft sucky stuff. Legs very tired now!!! Will attempt to ride the black beast tonight too.

3 comments:

Jadey said...

I think it's really cool that you got rid of the rats. But a snake living in my roof would scare the absolute shit out of me!

Sue said...

I'm with you Jadey, you can keep both the rats and the snake! YUCK! I think it would have been jsut like the spiders, I'm not going anywhere near that thing. If it was still there I think I would move out.

Your just being a show off now with that darn beach close to home. LOL

ms_attitude said...

LOL it's not that bad - given that we've really only seen her 'out and about' once before in the 10 or so years she's been living with us, it's not too bad. thank god I only ever have big dogs though :p

Now, we have had the odd brown snake turn up in the compost...and the dogs did bite a red belly black in half once for sunbaking in our bbq area....