Boodarai's photos with the keyword: tiger snake

Pierre and the baby tiger snake caught by one of our chickens

The baby tiger snake aught by one of our chickens

Was just whipping up a pav in the kitchen when Ad came in and said "one of our chooks is carrying a snake". Crikey, he was right! I carefully took it from the chook (who was pretty upset at me taking away such a catch) and have it in a jar. It's clearly a baby tiger snake. Hmmm. Tiger snakes give birth to 30-40 live babies, I just read, so where are all its siblings? And its parents?!

Ad's Vietnamese colleague once told him the best part of a snake is the heart, and you have to swallow it while it's still beating. Ad said he thought that must be hard to do - to catch, kill and extract before the heart stops, but we all saw today you have LOADS of time. Aaron was the only one really game to swallow the still-beating heart. So far no super powers have emerged, or at least none that we could see. Who knows, Ines may be in for a big surprise when Aaron gets home.

This is what the insides of a tiger snake look like. Just so you know.

Even cut from the body, the snake's heart continues to beat. Gettin' a bit creepy.

Be still your beating heart. The snake's heart continued to beat for well over half an hour after death, even when the skin, head and guts had been removed.

Of course you can't just waste a gift like a fresh roadkill snake, so we removed the head; cut off the best remaining bit of skin to cure; and prepared the rest for eating. As Ad was gutting it, it suddenly struck at him with the neck stump - quite accurately too. It would have bitten his hand if the head had been where it ought to have been.

We heard a brief skidding of tyres and a car braking hard, then reversing. Was sure it was one of our cats being run over and anxiously sent Ad off to check. It was not a kitty. It was a tiger snake. Quite dead, but still twitching.

caught this on our veranda with a pair of BBQ tongs. Not knowing where to best let him go (everyone said "anywhere, but not here!") I handed him over the shocked staff of our local Parks & Wildlife office.

caught this on our veranda with a pair of BBQ tongs, then handed him over to the local Parks & Wildlife office so they could release it. (They were not very happy about this.)