Snakes Alive!

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At the school assembly on Friday, the acting principal issued a snake warning. Not a fire warning. Not a psychotic-murderer-on-the-loose warning. A snake warning.
He went on to describe the apparent army of slithering reptiles poised on the brink of overrunning the campus. What fresh hell were my children being subjected to? I vacillated between stifling giggles at his comic descriptions and stifling a scream at my absolute horror. My maternal instincts were shrieking at me to snatch up my children and run as fast as I could manage. No mean feat with a 10yo and an 8yo.


Living in the hills as we do, we're pretty used to watching out for a plethora of dangers. Snakes and bush fires are par for the course at this time of year. The boys' school, however, is not in the hills. It's a mere 15kms from the centre of the city - that's just a 15 minute trip. We're not talking remote Australia here.


Yet here we were discussing the drill should any of the children encounter a snake. The dugites had been breeding and there were now squillions of the slithery little fellows on the loose. So now we have to add "stop, run and tell" to the traditional "stop, drop and roll" safety routine.