JOHN MARTIN'S TALES

Yet another column from my archives.

Will somebody please remind me in a few months’ time that I stuffed my seven-year-old son’s toy rubber snake into a box in the garage?

Being terrified of reptiles, I’d hate to forget and give myself the fright of my life while looking for the lawn fertiliser.

Jack’s toy is an alarmingly realistic rubber cobra.

Well… I assume it’s a cobra. Until I looked it up, I didn’t even know Australia didn’t have cobras. My reptile knowledge has always been fairly limited.

The rubber snake is grey with black markings, rather like something I saw disappearing into a bush the other day.

“Sounds like a goanna,” my friend Orville said. “But best to be careful. It might be a cobra.”

That prompted me to grit my teeth and do some research.

You don’t know how mentally painful it was for me looking at the extensive lists of reptile ID charts!

I’ve been terrified of snakes ever since I jumped over one in our vegetable patch when I was about six. I’ve seen plenty since then — and, even worse, failed to see a hundred thousand pairs of fangs that were almost certainly nearby.

When I lived in Papua New Guinea, a highly venomous snake once headed straight towards me while I was swimming in a waterhole Back of Beyond.

I wasn’t wearing my glasses and couldn’t understand why everyone kept splashing water at me.

Only later did I discover they weren’t playing around.

They were trying to discourage a rapidly advancing water snake, which skimmed across the water with its head raised, ready to strike,

A few years later we rented a beach house where the welcome instructions thoughtfully included the location of the power box, the spare key and the favourite sun-baking spot of a resident red-bellied black snake.

For three days I carefully avoided the back yard, the front yard and most of the house.

If a snake ever moved into my residence, I’d simply move out.

The snake could have it. Even easier with a holiday house. If snakes want to holiday by the beach, who am I to spoil their fun?

Which brings me back to Jack’s rubber snake.

A friend gave it to him years ago. I hated the thing, to the extent I didn’t like even touching it.

Gradually I became accustomed to seeing it around the house though

The other day I found it lying in the sun while tidying the yard, so I tossed it into a cardboard box in the garage.

“There,” I thought. “Out of sight, out of mind.”

“Are you sure it was the toy snake?” asked Orville.

“Of course I’m sure,” I said. “What else could it have been?”

Orville thought for a moment.

“Just one question,” he said.

“It didn’t happen to wriggle when you threw it into the box, did it?”