Homo sapien: An Example of Evolutionary Transgression

When Are Bathers No Longer Bathers?

Remember that hilarious advert where the guy is leaving the beach in his budgie smugglers and the narrator asks at what point do bathers become undies? When he crosses the car park? When he crosses the road? When he walks into the shop? I love that advert.

At what point in his life is this little guy no longer cute? Look at him. He is tiny. He is no longer and no wider than a milkshake straw.

Granted, he has a little bit of venom in his teeny weeny glands that are connected to two itzy bitzy toothy pegs at the front of his mouth. But this surely not a face that only a mother could love? Look at those big black glossy dinner plate eyes; desperately shy and nervous. Those silky smooth scales feel just like your Grandma's old glow-mesh purse. And that cute little forked tongue whips in, out and around just as you imagine it might out of a naughty little child that is up to no good.

Is he no longer cute when the venom he holds is of a quantity that might make your cat sick? Lets face it, there is every chance that Fluffy might take a bite on her powder-puff nose as this little guy desperately tries to defend himself; locked in Fluffy's jaws with one of Fluffy's incisors piecing through his spine.

Is he no longer cute when someone sees him as the deadly spawn of Satan when he is slowly crossing the footpath? On a cold, but sunny winters day he barely has the energy to move, let alone defend himself. Is he less or more appealing to you after that same person rides over top of him leaving him to drag the lower half of his body off the pavement and into the bushes where he can die a long and painful death with a broken back, twisted intestines and crushed kidneys?

Is he no longer cute because he accidentally breached the confines of his tiny patch of remnant vegetation left by developers that built houses on all four sides of his home? In or out of the bush he is a threat to our safety, so best you run over him in your big shiny Landcruiser; right?

Or will he simply never be cute because he is a tiger snake?

Those three scenarios are real. They just happened in the week past; around the corner from me. The latter two victims are now dead; only the little bloke you see here, who was the hapless prey of Fluffy the murderous moggy, remains with us today. He clings to life as his little body battles in a race against time to repair itself.

Footnote: He died not long after this was written. As did three more in the same house from the same cat.