The next morning Marianne took us on a trip - a mystery trip. She wouldn't breathe a word of where we were going, just got all us WWOOFers into her car (with cameras, she told us cameras were important) and drove us through Childers and out of town. I ventured to suggest that she might be taking us all away to ditch us at the bus-stop, but luckily the reality was somewhat different: she was treating us four to a trip to Snakes DownUnder, a reptile park near Childers, run by snake-expert Ian Jenkins, who kept a taipan as a pet (taipans are the most deadly snake in Australia - well, the Eastern Brown is deadlier per unit of venom, but the taipan injects much more venom and strikes prey multiple times. Anyway, a bite from either would kill you pretty fast. Luckily anti-venoms are widespread and taipans are rarely, if ever, seen.) It had a much better feel - and much, much better crocodile pens - than the Port Douglas place, and many of the snakes on display were caught by Ian when they were found on domestic properties. Because we arrived early, we got a private guided tour by one of the handlers, round the reptile pens, holding blue-tongued goannas, turtles, frogs, and lizards of the desert, tropics and garden. Understandably, it being a cloudy day, the desert lizards were sulking under rocks in the below-par heat. There were also two snake shows, one packed with irrepresibly noisy pre-school children who were absolutely focused on what was in the biggest box in the small arena (the handler made them wait and wait. It turned out to be a baby crocodile), and one, hosted by Ian, with the Six Deadliest Snakes In Australia, including, of course, the taipan, and Eastern and Western Browns, as well as tiger snakes, which are incredibly well-camouflaged and also, not unexpectedly, pretty damn poisonous. Even those domestic-bred and oft-handled snakes frequently shot out of their carrying bags at a terrifying speed - Ian explained that if they had been wild-bred, they would "have bounced off each wall [off the arena] in under three seconds". Given the turn of speed that snakes have, then, the advice of how to avoid a bite when confronted with one is quite against all instrincts: stay still. Snakes see by movement, so if you stay as still as possible, an agigated, confronted snake will [hopefully...] slowly relax and move awat, Easy to say...probably quite hard to do, unless fear is freezing you in place. Luckily, the only time we've seen an Eastern Brown (on our mountain hike... in the future, coming soon), it was slithering away from us at quite a speed, saving us having to do anything at all.After the shows we got to hold the resident boa constrictor python, Kit, and the rather grumpy baby croc (I'd be grumpy too if I knew I'd be going back to the crocodile farm when I got too big - I didn't ask what the crocs were being farmed for, but I'm fairly certain it's not for a life of frolicking in swamps). The croc had an amazingly hard back, and a very soft underside, which is probably the way round they'd want it, in the wild, when they have to defend themselves from bigger crocs (often their parents!) looking for a snack.
Lastly we saw the crocodile feeding, which was dramatic - even Ian, in the pen with a giant adult male croc lunging at him, seemed a little disconcerted by 'Macca's' energy on that particular day. He couldn't have been hungry, since crocs need very little food, especially when they don't have to exert energy hunting for it. Maybe he was just playing....? Well, luckily no one lost any limbs that day. It's a risky job, that's for sure, but I suppose if you're confident enough to keep a taipan as a pet, then you have to pretty sure of your animal-handling skills. Despite all appearances to the contrary, I think he's mental, personally!
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