Snakes are really soft to touch, almost like velvet.

Remarkably like the softest velvet in fact but more about the snake I was stroking later in this post.

I haven’t had the time to respond to your emails and comments yet as time just slips through my fingers lately and I think, “I will answer them in a minute,” and then pffft it is suddenly two days later. So I wanted to take the time to say thank you to you all here.  All your comments made me smile and they have also made me realise that you actually do like what I am doing so thanks heaps for cheering me up.

Your response was just the kick up the bum I needed to make me realise that my words are important and if I say just one thing that touches one person then that has to be a good thing.

Now back to the story of the snake.

We live on a sloping block of land in the hills above a small Southern midlands town. Tasmania is unlike anywhere else in the world in that we still have most of our natural assets left, even though there are those in power who would like to cut down every tree on the island and flog them off as woodchips.

This is the view from the back of my house looking down towards the bush. You can see the young cherry tree is missing all its lower branches. That was the damage from those bloody cows a few weeks ago.

So you can see that I dont  live in suburbia even though I am only 45 minutes or so from the capital city Hobart. So snakes are part of my environment and I am sure my daughter Veronica can tell you a couple of snake stories of her own as well.

I had been helping The Spouse put a window in my studio.

As I walked back down to the house there was a tiny snake curled up, upside down in the middle of the driveway. I called The Spouse over to check it out because even though I was pretty sure the snake was dead, poking it to check, definitely fell in the category of  “jobs just for husbands”. After The spouse had confirmed that the snake was really dead and not just pretending, he picked it up and carried it down to the house for me to photograph.

I was really interested in the patterns of the snake’s skin and once I realized that the snake wasn’t going to come back to life and go for my throat I took lots of photos and daydreamed away about snake skin patterned pots.

I have been working with a glaze this year that is quite similar to the soft muted colours of the snakes belly. All I will have to do is change the amount of copper oxide in the glaze and add a bit of cobalt and it will be easy enough to reproduce the lovely muted colours of the snakes belly.

Once I had finished taking photos I placed the snake on a log near my frog pond, hoping that a bird would fly down and eat it so that it hadn’t died in vain. Two hours later the snake was gone.

You can see how small this little white lipped whip tail snake is by comparing it to the blades of grass in the photo. It was strange that even though I knew the snake was dead I was still quite hesitant about touching it. Our primal fears are really strongly ingrained aren’t they. Its skin was really like the softest suede and I was quite sad that it had died but at least I took some photographs and a bird had a free lunch.