A Close Encounter With A Red Bellied Black Snake

A Close Encounter With A Red Bellied Black Snake

Date: 2009.03.05 | Category: home | Tags: Australian snakes.,Eastern brown snake,Poisonous snakes,Red bellied black snake,tiger snake

This morning I was taking a walk around our property, enjoying the glorious sunshine. I had my son with me and the dogs, including the garden terrorist.

We have a dam on our land that we use to water the garden. It was here that I was marvelling at the dragonflies flitting over the water, when one of the dogs had a close encounter with a Red Bellied Black Snake.

Image taken from the Museum of Victoria.

He was sunbaking only a few meters from us and I watched him as he rose up his body in a position ready to strike. Quickly I growled at the dog to immediately come to me, which she did thankfully and the snake slithered off into the scrub near the dam. This particular species of snake is usually not very aggressive, but is considered docile and will try to escape a situation at the first opportunity.

I was relieved that it wasn’t my son who discovered it. He has walked by one on a different occasion and came close to just about trodding on it’s head!

The red bellied black snake is probably one of Australia’s most well known snakes. They really are quite beautiful ( if you like snakes!) with a glossy black body and intense red belly. They are venomous which means that if they happen to bite you, they can kill you, although these snakes are not as poisonous as many other Australian snakes. Some people say they are a good snake to have around as they actually eat the baby snakes of the more venomous species like the Eastern Brown’s and Tiger snakes.

We are right in the middle of their breeding season and apparently each mother snake can give birth to up to 40 young live snakes!

I am usually very conscientious about walking around in the bush during the Summer. I have encountered around 5 snakes in the few years we have lived here. In fact one was right up in the house when we were building! It is actually quite late in the season to be seeing them and in fact this is the first one I have seen on the property all Summer.

I am not much of a snake lover, lol, and I would be happy actually not to encounter him again for a while
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3 Responses to “A Close Encounter With A Red Bellied Black Snake”

Thorne (1 comments.) 09/03/07 17:17

He is quite beautiful, but a deadly sort of beauty. When my daughter and I walked here in the desert when she was small, we always carried a walking stick. We have rattle snakes here, but I believe they are the only poisonous snake in our region and thanks to that rattle one usually hears them first.
Grace (14 comments.) 09/03/10 17:09

I don’t like snakes. Lots of people do I guess but I’m not one of them. Thankfully only the little garden snake comes around here and even it is shy thanks to my garden cats keeping watch. No red bellied snake but we do have red legged frogs.

I’m glad you were able to see it and it saw you and slithered away.
Amanda (24 comments.) 09/03/14 16:40

hate Hate HATE snakes.
Especially red-bellied blacks – they stalk me I tell you!
When I worked for forest research, there’d always be one curled around the first measure tree in every plot – a great way to start the day. for some reason we had a measure plot that *had* to be measured each season … so you can guess just how much fun the spring measure was….

They *infest* the shed at the farm and I still have nightmares from watching my BIL kill one and then notice a tail in the RBB’s mouth, which he pulled on and removed 2ft tree snake from a 2.5 ft RBB!
One even crossed teh highway in front of our car last weekend … ugghhhhhh.