Visiting Cemeteries

I used to "pick up" ticks belting around the bush as a kid. Fortunately my Dad was a doctor and used whip them out smartly with tweezers...still have a couple of tiny scars on my belly to remind me all these years later. Using salt to get leeches off was always fun.

Snakes are'nt my go. Last Winter '04 I was digging out the old surround of my gg-grandparents grave in a private, country cemetery in order to re-concrete it. A black snake had decided it was a nice spot to curl up for its long sleep. Luckily it was very groggy and I picked it up in the shovel and hurled it over the fence and into the bush outside. Such an indignity I bet it thought!

Then last May in the same cemetery I spent some half-hour weeding, spraying, sweeping and placing flowers on the large grave of another set of gg-parents and g-aunts and uncles. On returning from the car with a shovel, I was confronted with a large tiger snake as it slithered sideways back into the grave under the broken concrete base....we watched each other very intently indeed. Luckily at that time of year it was evidently not too aggressive, as generally tigers are in a constant attack mode. Or perhaps, I would like to think, my grandparents were looking out for me.

I gingerly revisited this grave just last week and made a quick inspection. The weeds and blackberry shoots having died off and everything looking OK , I bid all the souls within a fond greeting and beat a hasty retreat. There is plenty of evidence of wombats and rabbits burrowing into the graves, but both instances were a timely reminder that other more sinister animals make them their home too.

John.

sick dressed,