Well, there’s been lots of excitement in the neighbourhood today.

I was summoned downstairs earlier to look out of our window. And there, standing in the beautifully kept garden of our next door neighbours, were two policemen. The expressions on their faces spoke of trouble, and they carried bags and sticks.

My heart sank as I intuitively realized my sweet, charming and quiet neighbours were in fact dangerous drug dealers who had just been bust. They had to be, right? Wouldn’t that explain the abject terror in their eyes? Wouldn’t it explain the policemen prowling around their garden?

Obviously not. A better explanation would be the spotting of a Mainland Tiger Snake wrapped around a rock next to their fish pond – which backs onto our property. A tiger snake, you say? Never heard of it? No worries. Allow me to enlighten you.

Tiger snakes used to be the most common cause of snake bite fatalities in Australia. (That’s changed now. Brown snakes are the biggest cause of fatalities – but only, it seems, because the number of brown snakes found in Australia has grown hugely in the last few years). Female tiger snakes birth about 30 live young in late summer, and their food of preference is frog. Oh, and here’s an interesting fact. If you harm or kill a tiger snake, you can be fined up to $4 000.

We have a lot of frogs in our garden. I’m not kidding. Tons of them. In fact, they are Luigi (the dog’s) favorite toy. He likes nothing more than chasing down, capturing and torturing them to death. Seems like he now has competition.

While the policemen tried their best, they could not actually capture the dear thing. They managed to grab it by it’s tail and toss it over the neighbours’ fence into the adjoining park. The last I saw of it, it was slithering away towards greener pastures. Thing is, I left shortly thereafter. There exists every possibility that Tiger could have turned back and targeted our house as his greener pasture.

Joys! This isn’t a first for us. Nope, a while back we found a lovely red-bellied black snake down by our pool. (Yep, I blogged about it. You can check out that story here.)

Hmmm. And to think we came to live in Australia because it would be safe…

Jess