My new book WILD Life Death Encounters with Wild Animals, true stories, is soon to be launched as both a Kindle E-Book and Paperback version. Launch Date is Monday 4th October 2021
This book is a compilation of my blog post series of encounters with wild animals.
I’d just like to thank all of you who have been reading my posts over the years. You have helped inspire me to write more and make sure my writing ‘fire stays alight.
The book description is;
“The compelling, dramatic series of white-knuckle encounters with a medley of wild animals keeps you turning the pages, feverish to know how Myfanwy manages to escape alive. A risk taker, she likes living life on the edge and in this adventure-packed memoir, you’ll discover how in the remote forests, deserts, and oceans of Australia, she sidestepped death not once but multiple times. If you fear snakes, spiders, sharks or dogs, this book is for you.
These stories span her childhood to adult encounters. They include incidents while traveling with her family to remote locations in Australia, to close calls with wild animals during biological fieldwork in Kakadu National Park in the Northern Territory. Other incidents happened while surfing and riding her beloved horse.
Myfanwy’s curiosity and depth of understanding the behaviour of animals, is reflected in the way she describes these contacts with wild animals. Her stories interweave a love of animals and nature, with adrenalin and adventure.”
Some of the comments from my series, posted here include;
Maria said of Cujo- the Attack “I could picture it as if I was there”.
John said of El Toro – “Very clever and brave – El bloody Toro made me laugh aloud. What amazing bush experiences of wildness you have had – so exceedingly rare – I am jealous. I also learnt that you need agility to catch Rock Possums, so that’s one career lost to me.”
Ben – “Great stories about spideys, I love them myself!”
Bronwyn said of Eaten Alive- “Fantastic story!”
Angela said of Eaten Alive – “Oh wow a compelling story! Interesting behaviours demonstrated in the part of both fish and human!”
If you’d like to write a Review for this book send me an email at myfanwy@myfanwywebb.com and I’ll send you a free electronic copy.
(To be eligible to contribute to Amazon reviews, you need to have purchased $50 worth of books from Amazon in the past year).
Please share this link if you know someone who would enjoy these stories.
Until now, I have managed to escape injury and death during my encounters with wild animals, but depending on how you see it, either my luck ran out recently or it kept running because I’m alive and writing this after one animal closed in on me.
For some reason, it seems to be those moments when I am relaxed and having fun that my world is flipped on its back. Minutes before El Toro the scrub bull confronted me I had been walking along a tranquil sandy creek bed anticipating a cool soothing wash downstream. Minutes before Jaw’s fin sliced through the water I had just begun to really relax out in those crowd free waves. This time was no different. Earlier in the day I had driven for forty minutes out to a floodplain paddock I’d leased for two of my horses. The grassy green field is in one of the narrow valleys that are flanked by the steep ridges of the Ourimbah State Forest, west of Gosford, an hour north of Sydney. I had my heavy breaking-in saddle and my light weight all-purpose saddle with me, and I planned to ride my new young gelding Jindy first and then my mare Twiggy. Jindy is pretty green and I had no idea how he’d react to the dirt bikes and four wheel drives we’d encounter so I rode him in the breaking-in stock saddle. When the first car approached us along the main road he freaked out, running backwards and he did the same when a string of very noisy guttural dirt bikes motored down past us as we climbed up the steep 300 meter accent onto the forest ridge line. I urged him past them with my calves gently pushing round his barrel and then he gained some confidence and started to relax and enjoy himself. His paces were smooth and super comfy and he behaved perfectly when we encountered more bikes, cars and wildlife during the ride.
Next it was my Arabian palomino mare, Twiggy’s turn. We had been training over the last few months for an endurance race so on that Saturday afternoon I planned to ride for thirty kilometers. Starting out slow my plan was to maintain a steady pace for the middle third, and then finish with a fast pace ride home. Usually I ride her in the light saddle but thankfully, this time I used the more secure breaking-in saddle. On the ride out she shied along the track a lot more than Jindy but mostly at rocks and stumps which is usual for her. We passed quite a few packs of dirt bike riders; a father with his boys on teeny cute dirt bikes and a few 4WDs coasting along. People were friendly and calm as I rode past.
Twiggy and I on a trail
After about seven kilometers, we chose the left fork at the main intersection and headed further west. I knew this track was pretty remote reaching deeper into the forest far from the hobby farms and well-used roads. I didn’t expect to see anyone this far out this late in the day. One red 4WD did drive past us but that was it. We kept on and the late autumn sun dipped below a large round high hill ahead of us. I felt my body start to cool down although I was wearing a fleece jumper.
I don’t know if it was the hill’s sweeping, dark black shadow or intuition but as we trotted along, the track ahead constricted into the bush and the air become super still. My instincts told me that we should turn around and not go any further. My eternal problem is I always want to know what’s around the corner so I ignored my gut and decided to explore further. We’d push on and just see what it looks like up the top there and then head home. Near the top, the track turned sharply to the left skirting around the steep hill while an embankment flanked the track on the left. The sun shone again, we slowed to a walk and I relaxed. I was just about to turn back when I heard a car engine slowly climbing the hill behind us.
The sound became louder and then it was drowned out by the noise of people yelling and screaming. I thought they were some drunk young hooligans driving along that were about to seriously hassle me. I coolly asked Twiggy to trot and looked ahead for side tracks but there were none. The screaming became more crazy sounding and I glanced back but only made out the blur of a white ute.
Then we saw it….Cujo (like from the horror movie). This grey bull-arab hunting dog, a meter high with a monstrous head had bolted hundreds of meters in front of the ute to intercept us. Cujo crossed the distance between us in seconds. So fast in fact that we didn’t know she was there until she was a few meters from of us. (I refer to her as female because the image of her is etched sharply into my brain and there is no willy in that memory). She didn’t stay within the three meter perimeter zone like wary dogs tend to do. Instead, she quickly circled us and moved in close very quickly, looking for an opportunity to strike. I spun Twiggy to face the dog, and when it refused to back off, I yelled at it “Go away” with my deepest voice. The dog didn’t back off. I looked up to see what the owners were doing, and I could see they were still 20 meters away. I looked back to the dog and it raised its head, staring up at me, rolling the whites of its orange colored eyes, mouth agape. It darted in under Twiggy’s neck and locked its massive jaws into Twiggy’s front hoof and pastern. Twiggy’s worst nightmare. Instantly she jumped away from it and leaped up the steep cliff rocky embankment next to us. Luckily she dislodged the dog’s grip, but she kept going and turning side on she started to fall back down towards the track. In that instant I weighed up the risk of bailing off her backwards verses becoming crushed if she rolled over me if she did continue her fall. Plus I didn’t know if I’d stay on anyway because I could not predict where she was headed or how. In the past I have saved my butt with a deliberate ejection and as a kid I fell off so many horses I kind of learned how to fall and not go thump and instead dissipate the momentum of energy by slowly rolling.
A dog with the same appearance as one that attacked my mare
As Twiggy fell sideways, the last thing I remember was pulling my feet backwards out of my oxbow stirrups, letting go of the reins and trying to leap off her back as Twiggy’s body rose up in front of me. Usually in these situations, this is when time slows right down and I’ll remember the every detail in slow motion, from leaving the saddle to hitting the ground but not this time. No opportunity for that prayer of contrition, Betwixt the stirrup and the ground or having my life flash before me.
I blacked out. I came to, my entire body a bundle of pain. I lay on the rocky dirt track and I think I was face down on my front. I couldn’t move at all nor could I speak. Eventually I started getting annoyed at the bloke who owned the dog whose voice I could hear telling me to get up just over and over. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t speak and he expected me to get up! At one point there was some commotion I couldn’t see and I irrationally thought maybe I could be run over by a car and would not be able to do anything about it. The all body pain rush started to subside and I realized the worst pain patch was my wrist. My leg and elbow were sore too. Moving my fingers I told myself and the man that it’s probably just a sprain. That type of pain however felt quite severe. I had no bones sticking way out of my arm, only a small bump protruded. I sat up and the bloke proceeded to talk at me. I still could hardly speak. He kept on a few times about how my horse jumped up the cliff like it was her fault. All I could do was listen and store his words for later thinking. He said that the dog was his friend’s and that it didn’t bite the horse. I was in no state to even look at Twiggy’s body or really take in what his words even meant. Something took over in me in that vulnerable state that even if I could manage words, no way would I argue as I needed the help of the man and the woman that was with him. I couldn’t see the dog and they must have caught Twiggy. I did ask two things. Was it a pig dog? ‘No never hunted’ was his answer. I remember the feeling that there was this urgency that they wanted me back on my horse so they could just leave the scene. The second question I asked was ‘can you hold my horse while I get on’? They were happy to help. Both of them looked into my face and apologized to me which brings tears to my eyes as I write this. I think because those words gave me a sense of relief that they wouldn’t hurt me and vulnerability is not my thing. The man clutched hard at the reins and I remember the whites of his knuckles gleaming round lumps. The first attempt to mount failed because Twiggy moved. I knew I had strength for only one more go so I’d better make it as good as I could I told myself. Somehow my body let me swing over her back and settle into the comfort of the saddle and security of being able to get away. I turned towards home and the lady handed me the visor from my helmet which I didn’t know had broken. I vaguely recall another dog and maybe a kid but don’t remember the car number plate but over the few weeks since this happened, I’m starting to get an image of it suggesting I did try and take it in.
Aggressive dog
The first ten kilometers after that were a mix of relief and trepidation. My left hand stopped working; it was broken, so I had to keep a firm right handed grip on the reins. My left leg ached with every movement and my right elbow hurt. I knew if Twiggy shied, I’d have trouble staying aboard and if I fell, I would really injure myself due to lack of muscle control and balance. I would hit hard. My body was a cauldron of pain especially my back which jarred at very step. My phone was strapped around my waist so if I came off, and there was reception and I could move, I’d be able to use it. After those first kilometers my fear was the people and Cujo would drive back behind me so on the slight inclines, I began to force myself to endure a slow trot to cover ground faster. I realized that if I lent forward and we trotted slow enough, I became distracted, and the pain became bearable and I loosened up. Twiggy shied slightly once which hurt but she really looked after me and carried me back the 15 kilometers safe and sound.
Puncture wounds to my mare’s pastern after dog attack
I slid from her back, tied her up but it was hard going undoing all the buckles and I knew the saddle was too heavy to hoist into the Landcruiser with one arm. I called out to my friend Jane who was feeding her horses across the road and she helped me out by doing it all and washing Twiggy down and later disinfected the puncture wounds in Twiggy’s pastern. In contrast to what the man had told me, his dog had inflicted deep wounds to the horse’s leg. Jane helped me take my bangle off my swelling wrist and gave me some panadol from the glove box. She offered to drive me to the hospital and take me to her house to sit with a cuppa but I said that if I could manage to turn my car around using her driveway then I’d be right. The hospital was on the way home. I managed to drive one handed although roundabouts were a bit tricky and I couldn’t park properly. Three hours later I left the hospital and drove home with a plaster cast after an x-ray showed a piece of bone protruding from my wrist and fracture across the main bone. No breaks in my elbow but a later bone scan revealed a compression injury to my tibia. The injuries I have don’t match with how I found myself face down on the ground and it is frustrating having a memory gap like this. My injuries included a grapefruit sized swelling and green thunder bruise from the back of my left knee to the top of my thigh, a serious knee injury, a broken left wrist with bone protruding, a bruise to my right bum cheek and elbow. And I had busted my helmet visor. But it could have been much worse. Twiggy could have lept down the cliff, the horse could have fallen on me, and the dog could have mauled me as I lay unconscious on the ground. So my luck is still running with me I reckon. And faster than Cujo can run!
Twiggy’s wounds healed and a month later, although I wore a cast on my broken arm, we successfully competed in an endurance race.
Twiggy and I during the endurance race.
Twiggy and I during the endurance race after the dog attack
For some weird reason, the scary spiders seem to be attracted to me. I wish I knew why because I am not especially attracted to them, although I do find the small ones cute. Luckily for me I don’t have a phobia about spiders like I once was had with snakes otherwise I’d be a quivering mess by now.
Black headed python wrapped around my neck
My big four fans are the dark and handsome lethal Funnel Web spider, the monstrous Giant (lizard-eating) Wood spiders, The Redbacks and my other endless stalker, the oversized Huntsman.
The Dark and Handsomes
Funnel web spider in attack position
Funnel Web spiders have repeatedly popped up in my life. My first encounters were innocuous enough. As a kid, I’d scoop them out of the bottom of the pool with a net. They’d be sitting in their own bubble of air seemingly waiting for me to rescue them, just like the bees that I’d find paddling around on the top. I would extend the pole with the net down to the bottom and carefully catch them and tip them onto the lawn. Then I’d sit there in awe staring at their black furry scariness. I once found one in the street gutter one night out the front of the house. Well my dog found it. All I saw at first was soft fur and not realizing what it was I tried to pat it with my finger. Yes dumb act I know. Anyway, I backed it into the concrete wall of the gutter with my finger and it wouldn’t move. I thought whatever the hell it was it should move so when it didn’t, I went into the house and grabbed a torch, came back and hello, it was a big fat female Funnel Web that I just had patted. She was not so happy with the tickle and reared back in the attack mode, fangs exposed. Close call really.
Numerous times I unwittingly carried the spiders with me, in my luggage or backpack. They had crept in too close to me. Once I traveled from home in Sydney to Canberra with a friend and we stayed at her parent’s house. I dumped my stuff in the spare room and later, my friend’s dad found a Funnel Web spider on the floor. When we were about to leave to go home to Sydney, he said,
“You can come and stay again as long as you don’t bring any more spiders with you!”
Righto.
Another time as a teenager, I was bush walking in the high country with a group of others while on a holiday camp and we pitched our tents at Lake Albina near the foot of Mt Kosciuszko. Next day, we walked out and stayed in accommodation for the night. Who should emerge from my pack but my furry friend the Funnel Web. Everyone freaked out because we’d just heard the story of the bush walking lady who had been bitten on the boob and died. A few years later I very nearly sat my butt on one at Blue Lake while tying up my boot laces. I’d been camping there with a group during a 7 day overland walk and we all saw a few of the Funnel Web spiders while we brushed our teeth the night before.
The deadly Funnel Web spider
The hairiest encounter I’d have to say was a potentially lethal blunder I made while catching Funnel Webs in the Blue Mountains. These ones sport oversized purple abdomens to go with their furry legs and head. My boyfriend (now husband) and I were catching some to feed some hungry spider-eating common scalyfoots (a type of legless lizard), which we were being temporarily held in captivity. They were the subject of an animal behavior assignment I had as an undergraduate at university. To collect the spiders, Jonno would carefully lift an old log, find the silvery white web sock like structure, (spidy’s home) and using long barbeque tongs, try and pull the sock with spider within carefully out and then place it into the small specimen vile I’d have open ready for him. I had a system. One empty vial in left thigh pocket ready with lid off. One full vial in right thigh pocket with lid screwed on, tight as, ready to go in the bag. Then, I stuffed up. One log housed two spiders. I unscrewed the empty vial. First spider went in there.
“There’s another one, hang on” Jonno said.
I focused on this next spider and placed the first vial, containing a Funnel Web, back in my left pocket without screwing on the lid. We didn’t manage to catch that second spider so we moved on. No luck for ages, walking walking walking. Nothing. Oh well. We went back to the hut we stayed in, for lunch. Before sitting down, I pulled out the open lidded vial from my pocket and to my shock saw the Funnel Web in the web still waiting there in the sock. But if that’s not enough, the night we arrived home, somehow one of these dark and handsomes made a bold move in the bedroom. I still don’t know how but, when I went to get into bed, there was one just sitting blatantly smack in the middle of the bed. Pushy or what!
Giant Lizard-eating Spiders
A giant (lizard eating) Wood Spider of Kakadu
Now I suspect that what I am about to tell you now could
be the subject of your very worst arachnid horrors.
For one not too averse to spiders, this had me on the verge of panic a few times. In 1996 I was scheduled to meet up with Ian Morris, a local naturalist of the Top End at Nourlangie Rock in Kakadu. He was going to show me the known habitat of the elusive Black Wallaroo. He couldn’t make it that hot and sunny day so I went for a wander by myself. Away from the track and up a gully I went. The rock filled gully turned into a chasm and quickly narrowed with steep tall sandstone walls rising tall on both sides. The light disappeared and the whole place cooled down under the dark shadows. I arrived at a tight section probably around 15 meters across in width. All sound left the dry creek bed I was now climbing up. I saw the first striking white spider web. (This was a mini one). I noticed the ample web size and admired and was a little stunned by a very large neat looking and colourful spider in the centre of the web, not realizing what was to come. This spider was way bigger than my hand span. Very quickly I realized that there were more and more spiders in the webs. Around the corner there were more webs, some with spiders and some not. Where were the spiders? I needed to know where the spider owner for each web were. I used a stick to carefully pull aside the webs so I could move my small body through the opening. This made for very slow traveling. I stalled. I looked around to take it all in.
Over near the chasm wall was a web with a massive dead eyeless mummified skink hanging in it like a serial killer’s trophy.
The webs crisscrossed the chasm from one side to the other. The gully had narrowed to 7 meters, and the spiders’ sticky nets could capture everything climbing or flying up and down the creek bed. With their overlapping intricate configurations they could also catch creatures moving sideways from one wall to the other. I moved on and up the gully, covered with balls of sticky goo from the spider webs. I was becoming tired. I lost my concentration and looked where my feet where going and not where my head was placed. I copped the dreaded sticky mess smack across my face and I knew that that the web contained a very large freaky carnivorous spider in it somewhere. Squealing, I threw my backpack to the ground and hopped around trying to pat my body all over to flick off the monster. Had it sped down my shirt to bite me on the boob? Or was it going for my bum crack to settle in my undies? Aahhh! Eventually I had to stop the antics grateful that no one was there to witness me in meltdown. I cursed Ian for rescheduling. I was confident that this was not the way he would have led me. No spider to be found or felt so I moved on but now I was a bit more reckless with the stick I hate to admit, in parting my path through the labyrinth.
I copped another web on my face, so repeated my
panicky dance before moving on, but faster.
The panic was taking over a bit and I really wanted to get the hell out of there. Finally I reached the end of the chasm and hauled myself out of the Kingdom of the Giant Spiders. I breathed again. Scrambling on and up onto the top of the sandstone plateau I sat down and let my heart rate drop down and looked out onto the impressive wide open savanna landscape far below me. More relaxed now, I quietly moved off, explored the top and was lucky enough to spy a shy big male Black Wallaroo who disappeared almost the moment we saw each other. Later, I found another route down, devoid of the spiders larger than a man’s hand.
The Redbacks
The highly venomous Redback spider
The poisonous Red back spiders travelled around in my five favourite glazed pottery pots that housed my native figs. Each house we moved to in the last few decades always had these striking fellows stuck somewhere to my pots. It took me a while to realize I moved them with me. Perhaps from our stuff we transported some into our newly constructed shed near Coffs Harbour. We would visit our acre block and stay in the shed during holidays but one year we arrived and The Redbacks had taken over. They had completely over run the shed in their hundreds, possibly thousands – they were everywhere. It was simply too dangerous to stay in the shed so we found a motel nearby and we had no choice but to eradicate them all the next day.
The Stalking Huntsmen
Huntsman spider
Stalking Huntsmen are forever entering the house and following me on my trips in the car. If they are not adept one day to enter the cabin of the car then they’ll obsessively hang on the outside. The usual stakeout spot is the side mirrors.
There they will wait till I’m on a stretch of road that’s exceptionally chaotic, to then pull a fast one across the windscreen and stop and stare at me, face to face as I’m trying to see the road beyond them.
The stop and stare lasts only a moment but is a bit annoying and distracting I have to say. It’s like they need me to see them. Yes I see you. Stalker! But you will not defeat me and make me feel fear! Bad luck to you!
Then I am forever evicting them from the house. I use a tea towel to pick them up super carefully and I try to have their beady eyes uncovered so I know exactly where their fangs are. I open the front door, take a few steps and gently shake them out making sure I see where they go saying “be free be free” you stalkery thing you.
This technique doesn’t always work to plan especially when they are monster sized and have planted themselves to the wall. The worse behaved Huntsman I went to evict and capture with a tea towel, spanned a man’s hand like the Giant lizard-eating Spiders. He had all legs spread wide displaying himself grandly on the bedroom wall. He was way oversized for a huntsman and began to get upset. He started skitting erratically all over the wall until he came to a stop just in reaching distance at head height. As I reached up to cover him over, he somehow did very fast a 180 degree flip midair and landed smack on my face. Aaaahhhh. I screamed, stumbled backwards and landed on the bed. I don’t remember much else with him but I probably then used my backup method, the broom. The spiders scurry onto the brush and I can take them out of the house with plenty of time even if they make a break up the pole towards me. So now when the larger stalkers are on the wall, I persuade them to go onto the floor so they can’t do their worst to me.
Beware if you ever become skilled at spider evictions then that might become your job in your house. I arrived home the other day to a huntsmen waiting to greet me from the kitchen sink. My kids and husband had quietly left him there all day leaving it to me to take him outside. I have to say I can’t complain, the hubster handles the visiting snakes.
I’m not sure when I’ll encounter The Redbacks, the Giant lizard-eating spiders or the Dark and Handsomes again but I have accepted the repeated advances of the Stalking Huntsmen, even though they sometimes overstep the boundaries with their long spidery legs and demand togetherness in the car.
During a possum-catching trip near Kakadu National Park with a team of blokes, I needed some time by myself to unwind and relax by the creek that flowed beyond our rough campsite. However, this tranquil sojourn ended up pumping my adrenaline to maximum.
It was mid morning, and warming up fast. I’d not long woken in my cozy canvas swag after catching Rock Ringtail possums (Petropseudes dahli) during the night. I was on a short working break from my research work for CSIRO in Canberra, to hunt down and catch wild possums for the Territory Wildlife Park in Northern Australia for a new public display. My role was to train their staff in my unique method for capturing possums. These possums shun traps so after trying an array of unsuccessful methods I had devised a new way to catch them. The adrenaline filled nights of stalking and running down possums were one aspect of this trip but I also had the stressful responsibility of the team’s safety. Abandoned mine shafts and getting lost were the main hazards. The nights were inky pitch black, this was country I didn’t know and unless I kept my wits and concentrated on my continuous landmark configurations of rocks, trees, bushes and logs as we walked through the bush, I could very easily cause us all to become dangerously lost. Late one night a few years before, in the remote Kimberley, after taking behavioral observations of Scaly-tailed possums (Wyulda squamicaudata) with my two volunteers, I was leading us back to our campsite and I became distracted with a conversation we were having and my concentration was lost for my marks. All of a sudden we were lost. We had been helicoptered into the site and the rugged dissected sandstone terrain stretched out for hundreds of kilometers in three directions and spanned about thirty clicks to the remote coast. The pilot wasn’t due to pick us up for over a week at that stage and the land was all roughly the same height with no knolls or mountains. Becoming lost out there could easily mean losing our lives. Luckily I had catastrophied just about everything beforehand and I had a plan for this very moment. When backtracking failed we halted and I pulled out of my backpack the heavy radio-tracking receiver I carried for this very occasion. We had radio-collars on six possums and I had located their various den sites during the day so we could wait on nearby rocks to observe them at night. Tuning in to a spare radio-collar I had stashed at camp, we then followed the blipping sounds until we alighted into familiar terrain.
Back amongst the dodgy mineshafts, I didn’t have a receiver. One particularly large sandstone rock outcrop a few acres across was one site that was a long way from the vehicles so I was cautious enough to tie some pink flagging tape to a tree. That marker actually saved my arse. A fair while later when I was leading the men back, I felt that initial, small sharp knot of black panic. Were these rocks familiar or did I just imagine it? Just when I thought I’d really stuffed up and become disorientated, the bright pink strip materialized, boom, right in front of me. My marker told me the point where I needed to turn left 90 degrees and head north from those rocks to get back to where the 4WDs sat in the scrub waiting.
The adrenaline during the night was fuelled from the point of finding multiple red spots of eye shine in trees away from the nearby rocks. The men stayed still and quiet so as not to spook the possums while I crept up silently, heart thumping, towards them, positioning myself between them and the nearby rocks. I’d leave enough space for them to make a run for it and wait. Then when they did, I’d run a bit faster and leap carefully onto them and swiftly maneuver them into a cloth bag. I really didn’t require more adrenaline peaks during the day after doing all this at night.
It was time for me to get a little space and solitude and find somewhere nice to have a wash and rid myself of the dirt and sweat. A brief hiatus from the nocturnal work was in order to re-energize. A wide bottomed, shallow creek flowed along one border of the campsite and out into the savanna woodland into no man’s land. Perfect. Padding away from the others with my favorite purple thongs (AKA flip-flops) on my feet towards the creek, I envisaged some quiet secluded pool I would soak in. Soak up the sun a bit and relax I thought. Lie back lazily on the sand somewhere. No one around to disturb me I thought……. Wrong.
So here I was after waking up in the morning, la de la de la, walking down the sandy creek bed, relaxing more and more by the minute, inhaling the damp earthy loam scent of the creek and enjoying the sun’s warmth through my shirt and on the back of my legs. The flat creek channel was around five meters across with steep dirt banks up to about three meters high. I rounded a bend and for a time kept walking, watching where I was placing my feet and zoning out rather than my usual thing of taking in everything around me as I went.
Looking up, my eyes instantly locked onto the enormous eyes of a very large and powerful looking young buffalo bull. Only about five meters directly in front of me, completely barring my path, he stood square and rigid. Attached to his head were two very large buffalo horns. His expression was a mixture of annoyance and fear. Me in that moment? Just terrified. Wild buffalo kill more humans in Africa than any other creature. This was not Africa but nonetheless this was a large wild feral buffalo. His eyes seemed enormous and we both stood still like matching marble statues facing each other. We had a standoff. I then ever so slowly turned my head to scope the banks for trees. All that was near was a spindly dead trunk all of about three meters high, and useless to me for escaping up.
I turned back to look at the beast and he grunted something to himself and started actually pawing the ground like he thought he was El bloody Toro straight out of Spain!
I remember thinking how odd it was that he used his left hoof to paw the ground, not his right leg and that he must be in that perhaps 7% rare cohort of buffalo that are left-handed. Not a particularly useful thought. Sensing that attempting a runner back up the creek bed would probably mean I’d lose this particular bout in a spectacularly painful way, I had to think quickly. Yelling might work but it was impossible to make myself look big. I dared not hold out my beach towel to look bigger or flap it at him to try and scare him in case he decided it is close enough to looking like the proverbial red rag, even though it wasn’t red, and charge at me. Thinking fast, I then remembered how hunters shot wild buffalo in the region and maybe the sound of a gunshot might scare him witless. Instantly I thought of my trusty old cheap purple thongs. Ever so slowly I let bag and towel slide down to rest at my feet while I simultaneously unhooked each thong from my toes. As I did this El Toro pawed again trying and succeeding in looking tough. He even lowered his monstrous head, eyes not wavering a millimeter from mine.
My eyes locked and loaded on his, I drew my arms slowly apart and slapped the rubber soles together hard and BANG! Wow! A sharp and loud gunshot sound came out!
Hesitation shuddered through El Toro and I mimicked the steady time frame between shots from a rifle and let fly with another loud shot. This was too much for ET and he turned and clambered up the bank away from me, his unappealing droopy ball sacks swaying from side to side before he turned around to look at me and bloody stare some more. I thought we were finished staring so I widened my stance, rose my torso and shoulders up and out, opened my eyes wide into a blaring angry glare and yelled loud and deep at him while letting rip another cartridge of thong slapping. He finally turned away from me and trotted off into the scrub. El Toro was not so brave after all. Bravo! I crept up the bank to make sure he kept going and watched him shrink into the distance.
So so relieved, I picked up my stuff and set off walking but back the other way. I was too shaken to keep venturing into unknown buffalo filled territory, so I backtracked to a less than ideal part of the creek with a section where I could bath. It had a nice long stretch so that I could scan for any more intruding bulls wanting their go at a stoush with me. My ‘gun’ thongs were within arm’s reach. After my bath, I lay back on the sand and reflected on how I had somehow survived three direct active threats on my life by three very different types of animal, a Great White Shark, an Eastern Brown Snake and now a wild buffalo bull. I thought about how one thing I am quite happy about is my ability to actually act under acute stress. Solve the puzzle and move.
I thought too how although I wouldn’t volunteer for these scary animal encounters, the floaty and overwhelming sensation of euphoria sparked from these life death events is enjoyable and that vivid base knowledge of really being alive in this world is with me until I die.
Snakes will not hesitate to hunt you down, chase you so they can bite you. That’s what I thought. I believed this so much that I only had to see a photo of one and then I’d dream of snakes all night. And these dreams were not fun. As a kid, I was often in the bush stepping across creeks, walking around swamps, over sunny logs, through the long grass. I wandered among all the favorite lairs snakes would be waiting and lurking. Mum always warned me of them, maybe a little too much. One particular snaky experience instilled the wretched phobic fear into me.
Walking around a dam on my parents’ remote 150 acre property, I looked at the dirty brown water. A bare soil patch extended up the hill from the water’s edge. Turning my head from the water, I sensed something to my left. Looking there, I saw a huge Brown snake with its head level with mine, opening and shutting its mouth.
Two thirds of its big body came at me through the air fast whilst only a foot or so of its tail anchored it to the soil.
I probably screamed but I know I ran. I ran past it fast. That snake’s face said it was angry and it was going to bite me. A bite from that monster could have killed me because we were situated hours away from any hospital. Mum saw the whole thing and said the snake was taller than me. Because this snake aggressively chased me whilst rearing up impressively on its tail it looked extra tall. Because the ground where it launched from was higher than where I was, it looked even larger. This, coupled with my young and impressionable age, led me to believe that all snakes all did that. Later I discovered only male Eastern Brown snakes become more aggressive in spring when they are fighting other males; most snakes just try and avoid people. Other species will even pretend to bite you if you hurt them by accidently stepping on them. They might strike your leg but many do this with their mouth firmly shut; it serves as a warning.
One time I heard a tale from my older brother who I thought for a while must be some crazy man. He sat down by this little creek one summer with the cicadas blaring and fell asleep in some shade. In fact, he lay across the footpath or slither path of the snakes. They weirdly slid their way alongside the creek next to the water. A big venomous blacksnake mistook Peter’s lower legs as logs or general forest paraphernalia. Gripping onto Pete’s skin with its multitude of little scales, it slithered up and over him tongue flicking and tasting the air as it went. My brother awoke, looked down, saw the snake and stayed as still as a tree trunk. Absorbed in its own rhythm of the moment, the snake meandered on along the creek and out of sight, apparently oblivious of the live legs it had encountered. Over time I realized this is the personality of the snake. I had them all wrong.
The game changer for me was my gradual mental deconstruction that all snakes behaved like the Flying Big Brown and that some are quite exquisitely beautiful.
On a walk I discovered that Northern Green Tree snakes were iridescent with an electric blue covering their sleek body and fluorescent yellow highlighting their head. Handling the cool smooth bodies of the non venomous species made me realize that snakes are no different to all the other beautiful wildlife I am lucky to encounter. Snakes are not out to get me. One cranky Olive python did manage to sink its sharp teeth into my thigh one time. It even left a tooth in me and gave me four purple bruises. It wasn’t happy with me lifting it off a road where it could have been run over. For a wild snake, it would probably feel strange and scary to be picked up and held off the ground by a human.
Death Adder – Artist: Obed Wurrkidj
Death adders came into my life in a large way while I spent my nights in the tropical bush observing rock possums for my Doctoral studies. My main study site in Kakadu has a soft sandy substrate and heaps of leaf litter. As I walked between my possum groups through the bush, I had to be wary of every step I took. These adders are sit-and-wait predators so they usually would remain absolutely still in total contrast to the Flying Big Brown and many times I nearly stepped on their sausage bodies. One time I stepped out into the night in complete darkness barefoot. As my foot came down I somehow sensed something and managed to do an awkward stride. Looking back with a light, there was a big death adder lying inert on this concrete paver.. It was strikingly beautiful golden markings. The fangs on these snakes are very long, and their bite is deadly. Another time I heard a rustling on the path in front of me and it was an adder thrashing it’s body from side to side to let me know it was lying there and not to tread on it. Later, my boy friend started research on the floodplain type of Death adder. These are larger and duller patterned than my sandstone ones. For a while, all thirty of his study animals lived at home with us in purpose built snake boxes and when we moved house, so did all of the snakes. I do remember a few times at night when I’d seen the slithering dark form of a snake either on the bedroom floor, on the bed or hanging off the ceiling fan and I’d wake up Jonno and tell him ‘There’s a snake’. I’d be standing on the bed and somehow reach the light switch to find of course yes, zero snakes.
Death Adder painting – Artist: Abraham Dakgalawuy
A few more incidents happened more recently that signaled to me that I was over the worst of my illogical serpentine fear. One night I was walking and spotlighting around a beautiful limestone rock wall in the remote Kimberley region known as the Ningbins. This area is an important and significant indigenous burial place that I had accidently stumbled into.
As I turned a corner, a large Red Tree snake dropped from the sky, and landed in a large loop onto my neck before entwining me like a necklace.
As I stopped and stepped backwards, it flopped to earth and sidled away. Tree snakes are arboreal and it isn’t surprising that one above me in a tree or a rock ledge should drop down occasionally. That is the logical, rational thought, but instead of thinking that or feeling fear, I felt a calm understanding that that red tree snake was actively protecting a sacred site and that it was time to leave.
Yes, I respect the snake.
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You can now read more stories in my series about Encounters with Wild Animals such as a Eaten Alive, El Toro and Cujo-The Attack in my new bookWILD Life death encounters with wild animals.
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