There is something to be said for journalistic restraint, and that is this: it has resulted in the perfect photo caption.
TO WIT: Australia is a land of horrors where every day is like that scene from 10 Million Years B.C. where the T. Rex and the triceratops fight each other.
TO WIT: A snake in Queensland has wrestled a crocodile to death and eaten it.
TO WIT: This “surprised” residents. The people of Australia are not easily fazed; they routinely perish on their morning box jellyfish commutes to work. Rarely does a group go out to lunch without losing at least one Dylan or Dermott to a flock of poison tarantulas. Great white sharks live in drinking fountains and suburban pools and are capable of human speech. Razor-backed armadillos that grow upwards of 70 feet in length roam the desert, where water is illegal. The infant mortality rate is 76%, due in large part to golden eagle snatchings.
AUSTRALIAN THE FIRST: “Say, is Thelma around?”
AUSTRALIAN THE SECOND: “Ooh, sorry, mate. Thelma got carried off by a flock of common death bees this morning. They’re making her their corpse queen.”
AUSTRALIAN THE FIRST: “Shame, that.”
AUSTRALIAN THE SECOND: “She had a good life. Want to go to the movies?”
AUSTRALIAN THE FIRST: “Anything to escape the centipede stampede that occurs every day at noon.”
TO WIT: A massive snake and a crocodile engaged in a death grapple for over five hours, and the snake choked the crocodile to death.
And the most energy the caption-writer could muster in describing it was “It then began to eat the crocodile, surprising residents.”
“Well, there’s something you don’t see every day,” remarked Rosie Prendergast, a Queensland resident. “Maybe three or four times a week, but not every day.”
She then disappeared from view, after accidentally stepping onto a death-tick colony and instantly becoming covered in a black, seething mass.
Tags: animal battles, australia, crocodiles, incomprehensible australia, snakes
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I mean, yuks and all, but did you know that everyone in Melbourne is permanently covered in flies?
From the article: “The snake certainly knew what it was doing”
I don’t even know what to make of that statement. If the snakes are now this practiced at killing crocodiles, what hope do we humans really have?
I loved that part.
And yes, we are doomed, we should abandon Australia to bide our time elsewhere until the snakes learn to swim and/or fly planes, then we shall surely perish.
“”The snake was “definitely very full,” when it finished, she said. “I don’t know where it went after that – we all left, thinking we didn’t want to stick around!””
WISE, Corlis. Wise.
I’m not sure the danger was in hanging around *after* the snake had gorged itself on an entire crocodile? “ooh, that was a great starter, I could really go for a bit of human now. If I had room. Or could move.”
On the other hand, this snake just killed and ate an entire crocodile, I wouldn’t put anything past it at that point.
Don’t worry! The BBC article How does a snake eat a crocodile? reassures us that humans’ shoulders are too broad for most snakes to eat us.
But honestly, if a snake made it all the way to my shoulders, I would be a little disappointed if it didn’t finish the job.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xd0cX1dogtk
I thought of the same thing. Oh, dread! He’s up to my…uuuhhfhhf.
{snerk}
most
The real takeaway from this being that enough snakes are making the attempt for scientists to have pinpointed the specific logistical problems they face.
i think you americans are (purposefully?) misunderstanding the meaning of ‘terra’ in terra incognita.
EVERYONE KNOWS IT MEANS “TERROR.”
Australia is out of control.
“A 2012 study published in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters suggested that snakes could sense their victim’s heartbeat, and let go when it stopped, preventing it from using more energy than required.”
WHAT ARE SNAKES
WE DON’T EVEN KNOW
How can we harness this power against the future Skynet/alien/zombie invasion?
How could this concluding sentence possibly be necessary: “The Australian state of Queensland is home to some of the world’s most dangerous snakes, as well as saltwater crocodiles.”
The Australian state of Queensland is a terrifying hellscape no American apart from Mallory can fathom.” There, fixed it for you.
“…so it was inevitable that they would eventually engage in a deadly (and, for the human residents, surprising) turf war.”
I’d’ve called it a chazzwozzer.
This is the best article about the best thing I have seen all day. I hope you watched the slide show, in which the snake splits its jawbone in half to consume the gator.
Here’s the documentary.
“The snake was “definitely very full,” when it finished, she said.”
Aww well good for him.
A+ job on the eating and the surviving. Take a nap, snake.
But, like, how did it even move to slither away at that point?!
Would it even have to? Or could it just sit there, having clearly just eaten AN ENTIRE CROCODILE, daring any other motherfuckers to mess with it?
As a veteran Sydneysider I have survived my daily commute to tell you all that this is all perfectly true.
That article and its accompanying pictures were the highlight of my day yesterday. The snake just looks so satisfied once it had eaten the crocodile!
I’m honestly surprised the snake managed to eat that crocodile and not split open-that has definitely happened, the snakes get a little over-ambitious. Oh well, good on the snake for conquering that giant meal, at least it means it won’t need to eat anything else for a good while!
Very secure in my decision to generally dislike the outdoors, since we’re all one step away from animal-induced death out here!
My favourite exhibit at the Queensland Museum as a kid was the goanna that tried to eat an echidna and died when the echidna’s spines impaled its throat. Here’s a photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/iheartmuseums/462282…
What did I think that that photo was going to look like?
I’ll be in chocolate, for the rest of the day.
OH MY GOD
edit to add the requisite DAMN NATURE YOU SCARY
Ah me too! Who cares about dumb stuffed birds when you can look upon monotreme/reptilian mutually-assured destruction?
I always assumed the goanna suffocated. Impalement makes sense though. I’ve thought about this too much over the years.
Why do I click? I know it’s a bad idea to click, and yet I click.
In Australia, even our herbivorous national icons are terrifying…
TO WIT: http://www.australiangeographic.com.au/topics/wil…
I just looked at the link title for that one and said no. NO, AUSTRALIA.
Best line: “It was actually very calm and peaceful”. Not for the crocodile!
“Ha, look at that cute koala!”
“The one biting the nose off of the kangaroo!”
“No, mate, the one taking a crap on that sheila’s dress.”
“Oh, adorable.
I am completely fine with this new development, as I was very unhappy to learn last month that crocodiles can climb fucking trees.
Maybe this crocodile climbed that snake’s tree and this is how she exacts revenge.
Did you listen to the audio interview? Did you miss the part about how THIS IS THE LAKE THEY ROUTINELY SWIM IN?
And how the woman was like: “Oh yeah, I’m definitely more reluctant now, since this is the first time this has happened to us. I guess I’ll just have to have someone check to make sure the coast is clear before I go in there again”
WHAT.
I Guess just see a snake eating a crocodile, and think, “Why don’t I just stroll over and get a shot of that?”
And lastly, clearly Miss Fisher was off solving a bigger crime than this. I wasn’t aware of being a soft-bellied wimp before now.
“you’re not yourself when you’re hungry”
WHAT KIND OF FUCKING MAD PERSON WOULD GET THAT CLOSE TO TAKE PICTURES. LIKE, GET THE FUCK OUTTA THERE.
Well, if you think about it, that’s probably the BEST time to get close to a snake and a croc, since they’re both likely too preoccupied to notice a human hovering nearby.
Okay, seriously, everyone’s comment got a thumb’s up; good job, Toasties!
I thumbs-up that because: Yep.
Remember the python in Florida who exploded after eating an alligator? It has haunted me ever since. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/10/1…
oh god why did I click that link whyyyyyyyyyyyy?
ETA: though at least that snake died doing what it loved.
“S/he had a good innings” – the almost-universal condolence offered for the death of older Australians. (Also British? Pakistani/Indian/Other cricket-playing nations as well maybe?)
Yep, we say that in Britain too.
There’s more where this came from: http://www.pedestrian.tv/news/arts-and-culture/sn…
Ahhh that’s amazing!
“I felt a lot of respect for the snake, it was actually exciting to be there and a part of it.”
What I can’t believe is we have so many amazing (killer) animals and now Mallory is trying to convince people that we have armadillos. I mean, surely we need to leave some animals for the rest of the planet, right?
Yeah – platypus have poisonous spines on their hind feet, no need to import giant armadillos!
I met a few Australians a few years ago and (obviously) my first question was something like WHAT IS THE DEAL WITH EVERYTHING IN AUSTRALIA BEING DEADLY? And they were all, “Oh, it’s not that bad. We have screens in the windows, so mostly the deadly spiders don’t get into houses. Just stay away from the outback.” Ahhhhh, I will take the never-ending winter hellscape that is Canada any day, thanks.
I also met some Australians a few years ago and demanded to know what was up with their terrifying animals, and they were like, “Yeah, everything in Australia will kill you! Wallabies LOOK cute, but they’ll totally kick you to death!” And then they cheerfully told a story about some lake where they like to go swimming where people only “occasionally” get killed by crocodiles. AUSTRALIA.
ACK! That’s terrifying. Also, I don’t have any reason to believe it’s deadly, but I DO NOT like the look of platypuses…I wouldn’t want to run into one in a dark outback.
But bears! And wolves and cougars and coyotes and angry moose! I saw a coyote on Calgary’s Macleod trail the other day. I’ve never seen a crocodile in Perth (I saw a snake once but it was dead).
Ok yes we have spiders but they’re little and easily squished.
Yeah, that’s true, there are a few nasty animals out west (I live in the Maritimes, so our biggest hazard is moose…which are only REALLY a hazard if you drive into them. Never drive into a moose, you will probably die). But even out there I think the worst thing is grizzly bears, and mostly it always seems to be hardcore hikers who go hiking places where they probably shouldn’t who end up dying. At least you would see death by grizzly bear coming to some extent and can take precautions to avoid it, how can you hide from poisonous spiders if they’re everywhere!!!
Plus I’ve heard squirrels in North America are like hell beasts whereas ours are kind of the least deadly of our animals. ??
Slight correction:
AUSTRALIAN THE FIRST: “Say, is Thelma around?”
AUSTRALIAN THE SECOND: “Ooh, sorry, mate. Thelma got carried off by a flock of common death bees this morning. They’re making her their corpse queen.”
AUSTRALIAN THE FIRST: “MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATE.”
Plus I've heard squirrels in North America are like hell beasts whereas ours are kind of the least deadly of our animals. ??