We used to have a dirty big carpet snake living in our roof. Which apparently is not at all uncommon if you happen to reside in south-eastQueensland- approximately 50% of homes in this region have snakes in their roofs according to Geoff the SnakeCatcherGuy’s anecdotal evidence. We only actually laid eyes on him a couple of times when he had come out of the roof and was clinging to the walls of the house, no doubt because he enjoyed sunning himself as much as he enjoyed making the dog go batshit crazy.
On one of these rare outdoor adventures we saw him hanging about with a huge lump in his belly, about two thirds of the way down his not inconsiderable length. Having ingested a tasty mystery meal the relatively large food bump was no doubt stopping him from re-entering the house through his secret snake door, where ever that was. I vaguely recall we were temporarily concerned for a small black puppy we had seen next door around that time… but the puppy reappeared a few days later and all was well with the world.
For the most part, we didn’t mind our resident python – we didn’t bother him and he didn’t really bother us. On the odd occasion that someone was going to enter the roof cavity to do some electrical work, service the AC unit or run some internet cables or something, we would duly warn the potential victim… err… tradesman that there was a 6 -7 foot long python in the roof somewhere but that we rarely saw him, he seemed harmless enough and from what we could tell, he didn’t eat much. Occasionally someone would come out of the roof with an alarmingly long snakeskin they’d found up there which the Small Child always thought was kinda cool. It was actually strangely comforting to hear him slithering about up there and we affectionately came to know him as Russell (for obvious reasons).
Well, for reasons unknown, Russell decided to leave Azerbaijan a little while back without even saying goodbye, which personally I feel was very rude after nearly a decade of free room and board! The downside of Russell moving out is that his comforting slithering in the roof has been replaced with disconcerting scritchings. Russell our resident tradesman taunter was also Russell our resident rodent catcher. So Azerbaijan without Russell is now Azerbaijan with mice! Donc, le chat est sur la chaise, le sange est sur la branche, et la souris est dans la roof!