Snakes and snoozing

Back at last. There was computer issues and some other offline crapulence which was really boring so we won't go into it. How was yer Chrissy?




Discarded snake skin. Found it under the holiday house. Apparently it’s a diamond python’s skin.

It’s very cool. Got no idea how to turn it inside out though, without ripping the bastard to shreds.




Saw a live snake too. One like this (Wiki photo). Red-bellied black snake, Pseudechis porphyriacus. Very sexy. Not a snake to go feral and bite the cautious admirer but very sexy.


The rest of my holidays was more snoozing than bushwalking. The weather was all over the shop, pissing down one day, back to normal stinking hot summer the next. I vegged out on the veranda and watched the brush turkeys and their chicks.

Photos & factoids




This poor little bugger died not long after this shot. Thought he was going to make it for a while there but no. He kept nearly getting to his feet then collapsing again.

He’s a baby brush turkey and he was mauled by a cat or something. Cats are not native to Australia so most of the native animals have no defences against them.

Buried him under the house and put a rock on top of him so he wouldn’t get dug up again and scattered about the place.

There was a brush turkey’s incubation mound further down the hill so maybe there was another chick that made it.

Roosting in trees
Immortalised on local bus-stop
Single Brush Turkey Seeks Same


Since I got back, the weather has been shit for walkies. Up around 34 (95-96F) one day, dark as night and stormy the next.


Haiti

Poor bastards. Bloody poor country, as corrupt as fuck, war, 3 hurricanes in the last 4 years (about that) and now the place is totalled by a massive earthquake.

So it's a bit off when those christian types were refusing aid to some people on the grounds they were of the voodoo religion.

The throw-away lines on the news about Haiti being the “home of the zombie” weren't terribly helpful either. Might be a bit smarter to point out that yer actual proper Voodoo/Hoodoo/Voudon/etc. zombie has fuck-all to do with the movie zombies.

Real zombies are people willingly taking part in a religious ceremony. They are spirit-ridden. They invite a good spirit into their body for a little while for religious purposes.

They aren’t green and oozing and they ain’t interested in eating your brain.

And while we’re on the subject, the voodoo dolls are bullshit too. They sell them for the tourists in New Orleans (and fuck knows they could use the tourist dollars, poor bastards) but they’re a Hollywood thing too, whitefella misinterpretation and invention. Sticking pins in dolls was something done in Europe many moons ago.

I loved and that Big Brother/zombie apocalypse piss-take on SBS but I do not enjoy my ABC making the sort of random statements I expect to find on bloody channel 9 or 7.

Now where’s my blood pressure meds?


Zombie linkage

Proper zombies

Haitian Voudon at Wiki
Voodoo Brings Solaced to Grieving Haitians
Living Vodou (podcast)
Louisiana Voodoo
Lucky Mojo (Hoodoo, similar to Vodou & Voodoo)

Movie zombies

Shaun of the Dead (rom zom com par excellence)
White Zombie
Bloody Ian Fleming
Dead Set (Big Brother vs the zombie apocalypse, on SBS)


Right. I'm off to set up base camp on the lower slopes of Mount Inbox.