With the warm summer sun also come thirsty snakes and hungry goannas. Both reptiles trigger alarm reactions from the alpacas.

One morning early the alpaca girls were agitated and peering at something over the closed gate to the dam paddock. Upon checking out the direction of their interest I saw an approximately 4 foot long Red Bellied Black Snake.

The snake decided there was too much commotion on the girls’ side of the gate and headed up the hill parallel to the fence line. Once past the second gate it spotted cover in a narrow grassed tree lane between the alpaca paddock and the sheep paddock/orchard and made a direct slither towards it. What it didn’t realise was that the lane was very narrow and it nearly punched out the other side before retreating the the safety of the grass cover.

Unfortunately, Abi the barn cat had noticed that faux pas and wanted to stalk after it. So I quickly scooped her up and kept her way from the area until the snake had vanished.

On another occasion I caught the movement of a 3 foot Brown Snake slithering up the sheep paddock, towards a group of sheep snoozing in the shade. It was a hot day and the snake was obviously uncomfortable about being in the open and exposed. As it approached the sheep they got up startled and backed off. The snake reared up when they moved but did not attempt to strike. Much to my relief (and probably the sheep’s too) the snake rapidly disappeared behind cover.

It was unusual to see as many snakes out in the open as we have this year. The dry weather is probably sending them out in search of water. We have lost animals to snake bite in previous years, but (touch wood) none lately.

We also have a number of local goannas, some of them I have written about before. One really big one is easy to spot lumbering through paddock, even from a distance, once the alpacas indicate which way to look.

The local galahs are good indicators of goanna activity, and have a particular warning shriek when any goanna is trying to raid their nests high in the eucalyptus trees. One hot day just before Christmas I discovered a sleepy goanna flattened out in the shade of my aviary complex. I decided to leave the trough filling and watering out that door till later!