SNAKES ALIVE
By Bob Magor

Now a brown snake’s ‘bout as deadly
As and Aussie snake can get,
And he’ll chase you if it suits him,
So don’t keep him as a pet.

And when summer makes him playfull
Then he’s best left well along,
Which is easy if you’ve see him
And his presence there is known.

But while cruising on my Ag bike
In the fiery midday sun,
I was checking sheep and water
On my dried and southern run

When I slowed to cross a gully’
That turned out a t big mistake,
For I crossed the favourite pathway
Of a seven-foot brown snake.

Well, I thought I heard a rustle
But saw him far too late,
And the snake passed through my back wheel
Like a poker through a grate.

With the wheel still slowly turning
He was picked up like a staff.
Till he met up with the back forks
Which then folded him in half

Now this bumpy revolution
Didn’t do much good
Through the spokes he saw my pants leg
He would bite it if her could

Through the wheel he did a U-turn
He would strike revenge and pain
But the forks loomed up to clout him
And he circled around again

Several times he passed back through the wheel
His body did disjoint
A patterned laced amongst the spokes
Like reptile needle point

The snake was now quiet angry
As he bit around the seat
I was lucky that his snappy end
Had shortened by two feet

For each time he treaded through the wheel
His length contracted some
By stroke of luck he couldn’t reach
The outskirts of my bum!

The snake bit the seat and mudguard
And he bit the rim and tyre
My legs were on the handlebars:
I couldn’t get them higher.

But he snake now had concussion
From each revolution’s clout –
A sort of chiropractic nightmare
With his vertebrae all out.

Though just when I thought he’d mellowed
He came back to like again,
When his threshing tail twitched sideways
And caught up there in the chain

Well that really make him savage
He’d a tear in his eye
As six inches of his rear end
On the sprocket passed him by

The front wheel struck a pothole
Fro the bike I did propel
Which ejected me some distance
From this serpent ride from hell.

As I lay there shocked and bleeding
I reflected on the ride
Watched the back wheel bravely churning
As the bike lay on its side

And that snake was madly hissing
Still quite shirty from he fray,
Biting bits of bike at random –
It would need a tourniquet.

Till he bit the plastic fuel line
That protruded from the tank
And spilled out the liquid contents,
Smelling volatile and rank.

It all happened in and instant
With a spark, a blinding flash
And a cataclysmic fireball
Turned my paddock into ash.

Yes this Kawasaki cometh
Rose volcanic fro the ground
With a half-cooked snake still bitting
Every piece of bike he found

And the bushfire that resulted
Took us several days to quell
As it burnt out several neighbours
And a national park as well.

And police investigating
To the cause, they called me odd,
And dismissed by brown snake story
With their verdict – "Act of God’

Now I grin with some amusement
When a batch o greenies shine
That "all snakes should be protected a
And to kill one is a crime."

It’s quiete obvious they’re new chums –
Never been outside of town -
And they’ve never shared an Ag bike
With a very snaky brown.