Red Bellied Black
18mm by 13mm - Mosaic gold in sterling silver
$150 USD
This post reaches back through time to my first visit to Australia. I was still newish to the travel game, less than two years into my nomadic life, and still regularly went for a run.
So one fine morning, I took the recommendation of the friend I was visiting and ran towards a neighbouring town that had what I was told was a pleasant lagoon with a nice path around it. This sounded perfect—while I'll basically run anywhere, it's nice to run on actual ground rather than pavement, and running in nature is better than running in a town or city.
I was nine years younger, an avid runner, and relatively fast. I remember feeling pretty good that day, enjoying the dappled shadows on the path, hearing the crunch of bush debris under my feet as they hit ground. Then I see it.
It's only about a metre from the path, coiled up, basking in some of that sunlight that was so visually pleasing a moment before. I'd never seen a non captive snake before, save a wee garter snake here and there. I live in Canada for goodness sake. I know that Australia has a lot of venomous snakes (among other creatures). And I'm creating some pretty heavy percussion on the ground.
As one only can when adrenaline shoots through your veins, my thought process happened at the speed of lightening. If I try to pull up now, given my current pace, I'll end up right alongside it. If I keep going, maybe it follows, maybe it doesn't. Better chances.
So I sped up, keeping as far to the other side of the path as humanly possible, and ran towards the houses in the distance, at which point I promptly whipped out my phone and called my friend. Nothing slithered after me. On the phone, we debated what sort of snake it might have been, eventually settling later on it having been a Red Bellied Black. In fairness, I didn't stop to examine its underside, but upon seeing pictures of both it and the Eastern Brown, I didn't think it was the latter deadly serpent.
I ran back home on the pavement.
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