Saturday 19 January 2008

Electric Snake

Nuju is a friendly dog. He plays with bees, and flies and angry dogs, all with a complete disregard for his safety or their bared stingers or teeth. We know that the first snake he sees he'll play with it. Something needed to be done, every time we see him disappear into long grass we freak out. Snakes around here are nothing if not prolific. So when our next door neighbour spotted one by his chook pen (he almost stood on it), he knocked it on the head. The family feel bad about this, but as they had 3 young children and the kids play there all the time it is an understandable response.

As we've been asking the neighbourhood to supply us with a dead 'un for a while now, it was good to see Neil turn up with bag in hand. Trev promptly laid it on a wooden plank, attached one end to a battery terminal and asked Nuju over for a look. Nuju was his usual inquisitive self, which resulted in a sharp yelp and a fall over backwards to get away, upon which he was still interested but stayed a good metre or two's distance. Another neighbour is set to use the snake in the same way, he provides a 'refresher course' whenever he finds a dead snake. At least 5 dogs died from snake bite in our area over Christmas. Hopefully this will keep Nuju from ever being counted as one of their number.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hi Linda,

This is a great idea from Trev. Can you provide a photo of the set-up or the type of battery so that we could replicate the lesson?

Thanks,

Katy