Macgirvin.COM

mike

Sat, 07 Aug 2021 17:21:31 +1000

Copperheads about...

This one (right side just above center) just watched me work on fences for a while and then slithered away. I'll have to say It was better when I knew where it was than when I didn't.

coiled copperhead snake near  a fallen tree

Oliver

Sat, 07 Aug 2021 18:10:53 +1000

Stefan Haydn

Dantooine, Sun, 08 Aug 2021 00:00:20 +1000

I guess I would be biten immediately, because I don’t see it in the picture.

Einer von Vielen

Sun, 08 Aug 2021 04:10:16 +1000

The head is visible only? In the wood?

mike

Sun, 08 Aug 2021 06:26:44 +1000

I'd get a new phone but it was a birthday present and it works, but it has an awful camera CCD. This was a good size snake (I'm guessing nearly 1m long if it was uncoiled) and about 1.4m away.

snake from previous photo - highlighted due to poor photo quality

Stefan Haydn

Artaru, Sun, 08 Aug 2021 06:42:04 +1000

@mike Ah, there it is. Only 1.4 m away? Hahaha…that must be really far for australian(?) conditions. I don’t think I could get used to that.

mike

Sun, 08 Aug 2021 07:08:42 +1000

Depends on the snake. We get a lot of copperheads. They can be deadly, but not usually aggressive unless threatened.

Stefan Haydn

Ansion, Sun, 08 Aug 2021 07:36:56 +1000

@mike This is something a bavarian mind can’t process. Living somewhere where a lot of dangerous or deadly animals are common neighbours, saying hello once in a while and keep on doing your daily business.

I have seen a documentary about australian snakecatchers a few weeks ago. A lady was going to fetch the mail, opened the lid and got greeted from a hissing snake. I think I just would pass out.

mike

Sun, 08 Aug 2021 08:22:46 +1000

I live on the edge of a world heritage wilderness that pretty much burnt to the ground. Our property became part of the wildlife corridor and now we get all kinds of critters passing through. The rodent plague was a bit wild, but for the most part we just make sure that all the critters move through safely and try to help them out if they're in trouble.

Stefan Haydn

Mustafar, Sun, 08 Aug 2021 09:19:26 +1000

@mike I don’t know what to say. It is amazing and frightening the same time. It’s not just the kindness to help such dangerous animals (I could only imagine over time it feels like helping a bird out of the house with an extra spicy flavour) but also seeing this huge amount of visitors which only want to find a new home give me the impression of apocalyptic dimensions.

I hope soon you will find back to normality, which sure is another normality I am comfortable with in the „boring“ wildlife scenes of Bavaria.

mike

Sun, 08 Aug 2021 10:33:41 +1000

give me the impression of apocalyptic dimensions.

Perhaps I've failed over the last couple of years to adequately communicate what has happened here. The apocalypse is here, right now, today. I find it highly unlikely that Bavaria will remain boring for very long.

We try to help other life forms survive because we are also a life form.

Petros Ośmiokrotny

Sun, 08 Aug 2021 10:40:35 +1000

We try to help other life forms survive because we are also a life form.

I hope you're ok, if I use this quote.

Stefan Haydn

Mustafar, Sun, 08 Aug 2021 19:31:21 +1000

@mike True. The climate change is definitely real. Greece is burning, we and other parts of Germany have unusual floodings, the east of Germany drys out…but „lucky us“ have no dangerous animals which flee from those areas to pass us or want to stay here.

I haven’t followed what’s going on in your area (still don’t know where that is). This is the first time I get an impression about it. And it is still hard to understand how to cope with climate change (as this part of Bavaria is safe for the moment) with critters and rodents on top of that.

mike

Mon, 09 Aug 2021 08:26:59 +1000

I posted a lot about the climate emergency as it took hold here, but for personal reasons I dropped that channel last year and started over with a channel that's much more private by default.

I live on a farm that borders the Blue Mountains World Heritage area. We endured decades long droughts, the bushfires (which took out somewhere around 20-30% of the woodlands on the continent and closer to 80-90% along the eastern side of the continent), then we've had a couple of rounds of apocalyptic floods and a number of species plagues of biblical proportions (locusts and rodents for example) all while simultaneously dealing with waves of human pandemics and dust storms at continental scales.

Anyway, that's the background. But let me emphasize the part that over a billion animals died right over there (points finger) and for many of the survivors, their habitat will be uninhabitable for years to come. The survivors migrated anywhere that wasn't destroyed and many ended up on farms throughout the region. Some in pretty bad shape. We built an informal network of farmers and volunteers who have stepped up to rescue and provide shelter to animals. Had to. We were all overwhelmed. Kangaroos, wallabies, koalas, wombats, possums, echidnas, turtles, snakes, rats, birds of all kinds, bats, and even feral dogs and cats. There are wild emus and peacocks just up the road. Many critters have come through our property in the aftermath and some of the larger farms set up facilities specifically to house and care for the survivors. I would've built a wombat rescue centre personally (we see a lot of those) except these are large burrowing creatures and you need a chain link fence around a concrete platform that's buried 2 metres in the earth to contain them for rehabilitation. They can dig through anything else. I couldn't afford to do this, but one of our friends could and did - so we take injured wombats there instead. I know a number of people that deal specifically with kangaroo rescues. And if we don't know somebody personally, we take them to the local veterinary clinic as their help network spreads even wider.

But let's talk about snakes for a moment. During the bushfires, a copperhead sought shelter in our chicken coop. I was a bit stressed about this as I had to enter the coop to feed them every day, and kept worrying about this snake that had taken up residence, but left it alone. It eventually died there. When I inspected closer, it had burns all over its body. Poor bugger. Last year another copperhead got itself caught in our "snake-proof" fence and couldn't extricate itself. At the time I left it alone, thinking that I should just let nature run its course. Birds subsequently attacked it and pecked it apart as it couldn't run or hide. It died a horrible death, and it was all my fault - I built the fence. About six months ago another one got stuck in the same fence. My wife and I delicately cut the fence out around it to set it free. None of these critters deserved what happened to them. They didn't harm or even threaten anybody. They were just trying to stay alive.

All of this has changed me in a fundamental way. I used to be one of those armchair climate change activists worried about the collapse of earth's ecosystems in 2050, but no longer. Our predictions of what was going to happen in 2050 are happening today. The only thing we can individually do is - just. save. lives.

Stefan Haydn

Utapau, Mon, 09 Aug 2021 19:31:39 +1000

Oh, my dear @mike! I haven't known! Thanks for the background info. I have read an article about that in "The Guardian" as well after reading your comment. This is really terrible. You have the crisis right before your eyes.

As I said earlier, in this part of Bavaria we still live in solitude. Everything is far away, that's why a lot of people still see no evidence what is going on in the world. Also the floods in the south of Bavaria or in other parts of Germany don't seem to change minds at all. "Sure, it's a tragedy, but floods have been there for ages." they say. And still they vote the parties which could have taken measures a very long time ago. This is insane.

I think I begin to understand, that you don't see a dangerous animal in a copperhead anymore. You see a lifeform, which had to flee its original habitat because it was burnt down to the ground. You have my whole respect for that and your whole situation. I cannot imaging what you went through the last years and still have same fine humour, as I read in some other posts. May the force be with you, as one of my favorite quote says. Thank you for sharing your story.

mike

Sun, 08 Aug 2021 15:18:30 +1000

Sure - I don't claim ownership.

Haakon Meland Eriksen (Parlementum)

Sun, 08 Aug 2021 18:31:13 +1000

There are only three snakes in Norway; huggorm (Vipera berus), buorm (Natrix natrix), slettsnok (Coronella austriaca). For reasons I cannot understand, private citizens are allowed to keep several kinds of snakes as pets in Norway, and - of course - they keep losing them. Not far from here, two snakes got out from two different neighbours in the same neighbourhood, and neither alerted their neighbours. Idiots.