Pixels and Paperie

Well I'm certainly back into Blog mode again, it seems! It's still raining and this may be just what caused a little visitor to appear in my lounge this morning. Our maid, Judith found it in the corner near the window, all curled up. Needless to say, there were some shrieks and squeals once she discovered it was not a lizard nor a frog, but rather a 30cm odd snake.


We do live on a plot in the countryside surrounded by lots of natural veld grass, so I guess we have to expect these critters from time to time. But they certainly give me the heebies and I have been watching the ground everywhere I walk all morning! Fortunately this one is a common Red-lipped Herald (aka Herald snake in the Cape Province), which is not at all poisonous- in fact, according to a website I found (I forget the name), this little guy can even become so tame he will eat out your hand! (I don't think I'll try though!) They eat frogs (their favourite), lizards and mice. Eeeeeuw! (To think of hand feeding equally as freaky food to such a freaky critter makes me shiver!) (Sorry - I can take spiders anyday over snakes or frogs!)


One bonus was I finally have a (kind of) interesting photo for today's Photo for my Project365! Judith thought it was very funny that I first ran for the camera before I allowed our gardener to take the snake away.

Here's a photo of it once he herded it outside into the back courtyard. Unfortunately he injured it when he took it out the house, so he had to kill it. (If I had anything to do with it, he would have killed it anyway- but my DH won't have even the poisonous ones harmed! Ok- I'm not that bad- I actually don't like harming little critters, I just simply don't want them around!!!).

"Keep your fears to yourself, but share your inspiration with others"

- Robert Louis Stephenson