The Killer Koala (7 page)

'Many
people think . . .' Vic's monologue was proceeding; '. . . that a
snake is a slimy thing that is not pleasant to touch. Now this is
Very Wrong.' Just about everything people thought about snakes was
'Very Wrong' according to Vic, who used the phrase dozens of times in
every lecture. 'In fact, the skin of a snake is smooth, dry, cool and
pleasant to the touch and does not feel scaly.'

By
now the snake had made its way up to Vic's chest and was wrapped
around him so that he looked as though he was wearing a pneumatic
grey-green rubber wetsuit of extraordinary thickness. There must have
been four coils of snake around him, but half the brute was still on
the platform, waving slowly.

'It
is also commonly thought that the python strangles its prey. This is
Very Wrong. What it does once it has enmeshed some creature is to
tighten its coils and so prevent its victim from breathing.'

'Does
it bite?' called somebody in the audience.

'The
python bites for two reasons,' said Vic, as the snake's coils moved
up to his throat and the head, almost as big as his, peered over his
shoulder. 'One is to defend itself against attack, and
…
'

Vic
was now enveloped in snake from thighs to head. You could only see
little bits of his face between the coils. But he never faltered in
his monologue and his hands were waving in the air as usual, not, as
one might have expected, clawing at the snake.

'Once
the victim has stopped breathing the snake will lick the body to make
it easy to swallow . . .'

Vic's
voice was growing fainter, but we all assumed it was because it was
being muted by the folds of snake around his mouth. You could still
distinguish most of the words.

'Aborigines
find the meat of this forest python very good to eat
. . .
'
By now his voice was little more than a breathless mutter but
everybody, including myself, assumed that it was only part of the
act. 'No doubt this is due to its deep forest habitat, and possibly
because . . .'

Vic's
voice cut out altogether and his hands stopped making illustrative
gestures and began dragging at the section of snake around his neck.
He staggered backwards towards the rail and the people near him
scattered.

This
was too much realism, so I leapt onto the stage, followed by a couple
of hardy spectators, grabbed the snake's tail and began to unwind it.
The snake didn't particularly care for this and began hissing and
darting its heavy black head towards us. I knew enough about snakes
by now to know that its bite wouldn't be particularly harmful; but
this was a purely intellectual attitude and my emotions as the thing
flickered its tongue, hissed and waved its head threateningly, were
those of substantial terror.

Nevertheless
I could not let Vic be strangled in full view of the public, even
though he had recently told that public that pythons didn't strangle
their victims.

We
got enough of the snake away to enable us to see Vic's face, which
had gone vermillion. Streaked with sweat cutting through the dirt on
his face, he looked like a strawberry recently plucked from a muddy
garden. As soon as he could speak he said, 'It is commonly thought
that snakes, particularly pythons, are very hardy creatures, but this
is Very Wrong.'

Vic,
totally unabashed, went on talking as he stuffed the snake back into
its bag. The crowd thought it was sheer showmanship and cheered
mightily.

Perhaps
the unusually loud applause exhilarated Vic. Instead of taking a
slight rest by exhibiting an assortment of some of the less lethal
reptiles, he opened a small, violently squirming bag and pulled out
an overexcited taipan.

The
taipan is not only a very deadly snake, it looks like a very deadly
snake. Slender as a whip and fast-moving, this brown, metre-long
specimen wound itself around Vic's arms, darted furious glances at
the crowd from its sharp killer's head and flickered its tongue
towards Vic's face.

'Now
it is commonly thought that the taipan is a very vicious snake which
will attack without provocation,' said Vic. 'This is Very Wrong.' Vic
unwound the snake from his arm and held it up before the audience.

'You
will note that my method of handling this snake is very slow and
calm. This is to make sure it is not alarmed. Now this snake,
although used to crowds and noise, is very excited today and moving
around rapidly. That means it is at its most dangerous, and unless
handled in the calm professional manner I am using, would undoubtedly
bite.'

At
this point the taipan sank its fangs into Vic's neck.

A
taipan is so fast that nothing within striking range could possibly
avoid it. Vic's neck had been barely a handspan from the snake's
fangs. At one instant the taipan was waving from side to side, then
it flashed forwards, bit Vic and withdrew, but so quickly it seemed
it hadn't happened, couldn't have happened. The strike, the bite and
the withdrawal all happened in less time than a mousetrap takes to
snap down.

Vic
raised his hand to his bitten neck and looked at the snake
reprovingly. 'Now, that was most unusual,' he said calmly. 'That is
the first time I have been bitten by a snake that I was handling.'

The
crowd was awed and silent, not sure whether it was witnessing a
planned act or whether Vic had genuinely been bitten by a deadly
snake. I knew he had and I was horrified. Horrified and very
reluctant to go and relieve Vic of the taipan, which seemed much
happier and relaxed now.

But
Vic seemed unperturbed.

'That
bite would have been very dangerous, probably fatal, if it had
happened to one of you . . .'

Abruptly
a blob of foam exploded from his mouth, his eyes rolled up in his
head so they were only white bulbs and his body went rigid. A strange
inhuman squawk burst from his chest and fought its way out of his
mouth in a splatter of froth. His hands went straight above his head
in a convulsive gesture. The taipan went flying through the air above
the panicking crowd. Vic fell flat on his back, quite stiff, the only
sign of life the bubbling foam at his mouth.

The
snake took a long time to fall and when it did, it landed in the lap
of a quadraplegic youth in a wheelchair. This was probably just as
well because if it had to land on somebody, it was best for it to
land on somebody who couldn't move. It slipped off the youth's lap
and wriggled swiftly away into a patch of scrub.

I
was on the platform by now, screaming for somebody to call an
ambulance and for somebody else to kill the wretched taipan, totally
disregarding Vic's position on preserving native reptiles.

By
the time we got Vic to hospital he had gone quite black. Every vein
in his body seemed to have collapsed and he looked as though he hail
been brutally beaten and bruised all over. He was just breathing and
still frothing at the mouth and emitting these hideous animal sounds.
He was in an iron lung for a week and spent three months in hospital.
He never touched a snake again.

We
organised a search for the taipan, but never did find it. For all I
know, it's still roaming around the banks of the Hawkesbury River.

Liquid Assets

I
think I can safely claim to be the only writer in Australia ever to
have given an enema to an elephant
—
quite
possibly the only writer in the world.

The
elephant was named Annie, and she was on a farm owned by a friend of
mine, Alan Trevor, in northern New South Wales. Alan was minding her
for a travelling circus which was in recess.

She
was a medium-sized, very gentle, tractable elephant who spent her
time doing nothing except eating vast quantities of hay and slightly
rotten fruit. She had a grey and wrinkled face and soft brown eyes
with long lashes.

Alan
had made a small business of selling her droppings as particularly
effective fertiliser. He showed me with some pride several bags of
elephant dung ready for sale. 'She supplies tons of the stuff,' he
told me. 'So much I'm going to have to put it in the book as assets.'
Thereafter, he kept referring to elephant dung as 'assets'.

Then
one day the dung stopped dropping.

'Nothing's
happened for two days,' said Alan. 'There's about a tonne of assets
blocked in the pipeline.'

We
put in an urgent call for a veterinary surgeon to come and inspect
Annie.

By
the time the vet arrived, she had given up trying to eat and was
standing looking uncomfortably at the world and visibly swelling. Her
shape gave her a comical appearance; she looked for all the world
like a giant elephant balloon about to go floating off into the air.
Alan, who has a fondness for black humour, speculated on the
possibility of her actually doing this and wondering whether we could
somehow utilise the condition as a means of disposing of her corpse.

'I
suppose the authorities might object,' he added. 'I mean, a couple of
tonnes of dead elephant floating around the sky might be considered a
health hazard.'

Annie's
mournful eyes turned on Alan and even he had the grace to abandon
that line of conversation.

The
vet, whom Alan knew quite well, was a squat, vigorous, thick-bodied
and bearded man in his fifties.

He
looked at Annie cautiously. 'No droppings for two days?' he said.

Possibly
longer, we said; we'd only checked two days before.

The
vet thought for a few moments. 'I've never treated an elephant,' he
said,' but I suppose they're not very different from any of the
bovines.'

He
moved over to Annie and began pressing his hands hard against her
distended stomach. Annie gently touched him on the shoulder with her
trunk.

'It's
like trying to palpate a dirigible,' said the vet. 'Anybody know how
many stomachs an elephant's got?' Nobody did.

'Well,
it's fairly obvious there's a bowel blockage,' said the vet. 'But God
knows what it is. It could be a kink in the intestines, or a tumour,
or a straight-out case of oldfashioned constipation. There's no way
of telling for sure.'

'Do
you think she's dangerously ill?' said Alan.

'She
looks to me as though she's going to blow apart at any minute,' said
the vet. 'If she was a cow I'd assume it was the bloat and try to let
the air out by puncturing her stomach, but...' he gestured at the
huge inflated bulk towering over us, and shrugged.

'So
you think she's in danger?' asked Alan again.

'My
guess is she could well be dead in half an hour,' said the vet. 'You
see, what's happening
—
she's
got a lot of vegetable matter inside her and nothing getting out.
It's fermenting and producing gas. Her intestinal track is one great
balloon pressing against her vital organs. Eventually something will
break, or she won't be able to breathe. If we could get her to belch
it might help
—
obviously
nothing's coming out the other way, but how the hell do you get an
elephant to belch?'

We
considered the question, but unprofitably.

'I'll
go and ring someone I know at the zoo,' said the vet. 'Might be able
to get some help.'

He
hurried off to a phone and Alan and I stood silently, sadly
considering Annie, who was so blown up now that she didn't seem able
to move, and who looked more than ever like a huge balloon or a
stuffed toy of gigantic proportions. She distinctly conveyed the
impression of being about to burst, and we instinctively moved back
from what would be a cataclysmic explosion.

The
vet came hurrying back, looking positively gleeful. 'Right,' he said,
'we're going to give her an enema!'

This
statement was not met with absolute joy by either of us. There was a
short silence broken by Alan, who said, 'How?'

The
vet rubbed his hands together and looked at Annie speculatively. 'Get
me the biggest water container you've got
—
a
forty-four-gallon drum would be ideal
—
make
sure it's clean, fill it with water, and get me four gallons of
detergent, biodegradable.

'And,'
he continued, 'I want a hand or foot pump and twenty or thirty metres
of hose that can be attached to it. Can you do that?'

We
stood rapt in the implications of what he was saying and then Alan
broke the spell again. 'Yes, I can organise that.' He went off and
organised it.

Four
neighbouring farmers who had heard about the problem turned up to
laugh. Soon they were standing ten metres away looking on
interestedly and safely, while Alan, the vet and I stood behind Annie
with a forty-four-gallon drum full of water and detergent, a foot
pump and a length of plastic hose rigged so that the pump's contents
could be pumped out efficiently.

I
was delegated to do the pumping, which unfortunately necessitated my
standing more or less directly behind Annie and not far away. I
pumped on order in a test run and the hose produced a satisfactory
jet of water.

'All
right,' said the vet. 'So I'll feed it in. This animal is quite
docile, isn't she?'