On Monday I was at my uncle’s house in Brisbane, determined to finish a story that had plagued me. Every writer meets their nemesis – mine was a think piece on the singer Pink.
Each day I would sit at my laptop streaming Pink’s music and writing thousands of words – none of which was cohering into an argument. The piece was weeks late. And by Monday the bloated draft included quotes from John Howard, Andrew Breitbart and a random selection of 13-year-old Pink fans. It was a mess. Raise Your Glass played from the computer for the 105th time. I wanted to die.
I tweeted: “Literally this th!nk piece on P!nk is going to be the death of me.”
As I pressed send and I returned to the dreaded piece, something moved in my peripheral vision. Was it? No, it can’t be! Yes it was!
An enormous python slithered from the between the slats in the gazebo where I was working and towards my laptop.
I leapt back. The snake moved forward. A strange sound came out of my mouth. It was not the high-pitched shriek that I thought I would make on seeing a two metre-long python coming at me. It was more of a guttural yell, like I had been hit at close range in the face with a basketball.
“Arrgh,” I yelled. “Arrghhh, help!”
My aunt came running out. She thought something had gone wrong with my laptop and I had lost my Pink piece.
“Snake! Snake!”
By now the snake was casually flung across a chair and over the table, like one of Donald Trump’s very long ties.
It moved noiselessly, even playfully around the table, and then back up the walls of the gazebo, wrapping itself around a decorative cabinet. The aesthetic effect of the snake against the cabinet was strangely pleasing (they matched) but the emotional effect of seeing such a large wild animal near my laptop was fear and disbelief.
True Queenslanders, my aunt and uncle looked at the snake with nonchalance, as if it was a rainbow lorikeet or an ibis in their garden.
No, they had not seen it before. Maybe it had come from the creek. Yes, it was big. I cowered behind them.
“It’s harmless,” said my uncle. “Look, it’s just eaten.”
The snake looked like it had swallowed a large possum. A bulge in its middle was preventing it from moving through the slats of the gazebo. Like a fat man trying to get into skinny jeans – it sort of gave up and just hung out there. Would it just stay in that position until it had shat out the possum?
That’s if it was a possum ...
Last year while travelling in Indonesia, I had become transfixed by a news story about a farmer who had been swallowed whole by a python. He had been missing for a while, when the python – with a suspiciously large lump in its body – was “spotted slithering awkwardly in Salubiro village”.
It was captured, cut open and the man’s body was found inside fully clothed. Fully clothed!
I thought about Pink. This was all her fault. I had tweeted: “Literally this th!nk piece on P!nk is going to be the death of me. And then a two-metre long python appears.”
It was as if the snake was summoned, just like what happens in the Bible, when shit’s about to get real. Because a snake of course, is never just a snake. It’s a very powerful symbol that humans have used in storytelling and myth throughout the ages, not just as a metaphor but as a portent.
“What do you portend, snake?” I asked.
The snake did not move for a while, and my uncle assured me it was safe to continue working.
Focusing on the Pink think piece was now impossible. I jumped at shadows, I looked at my handbag and thought I saw it moving.
The sheer existence of the snake up in the eaves – digesting – was a fact that shook me somehow, like it was an apparition or holy vision that seemed unbelievable even though I was staring right at it.
“Look at that snake,” I kept murmuring to no one in particular. “Just look at it.”
I tweeted pictures of the snake and the division on Twitter was sharp: there were those that replied in ALL CAPS that I should set the snake on fire or behead it with a shovel and those who said the snake was beautiful and unique, and I was very lucky to see one so close.
For the next 24 hours I wandered outside, looked up at the snake – which had not moved – and would say aloud: “The snake – it’s still there.”
“Look at the snake, its still there.”
“OMG, it’s big!”
“I wonder if there are any road workers missing?”
The snake had taken up residence not just in the gazebo but in my consciousness.
My mate Trav, who is a real estate agent in Byron Bay, had told me, “Just wait until it shits everywhere. There’s one that lives in the garage of my vacant listing, it eats, then sleeps, then shits everywhere.”
But over time my thinking about the python evolved. I stopped fearing it. It hadn’t given me the evil eye or hissed or shown any inclination that it might eat me.
It was wild and beautiful, and although I shouldn’t touch it, I realised I shouldn’t be scared of it either. I shouldn’t want to set it on fire or murder it with a shovel just because it exists near where I exist.
When I left Brisbane on Tuesday, it was still there, up in the gazebo, the sun on its skin, the bulge still … bulging.
I texted my uncle on Wednesday night. He told me the snake “has been asleep for two days. Just hanging around. Tummy still full. Heavy work.”
As in life.
- Brigid Delaney is a Guardian Australia columnist
