“Always carry a bottle of whisky in case of snake bite. And secondly, always carry a small snake.” W.C. Fields (abridged).
It was Halloween when a tiger snake bit me.
Not a big one and not very deep, but I could feel the tingling, and the nurse at the hospital explained that being a ‘little bit’ bit is like being a little bit pregnant.
“I can’t relate,” I said, fecund with three kids.
“You better come in.”
The bugger had been near the front steps, brought to my attention by my kelpie imitating a pointer for the first time, but with head pointed sideways and elevated front leg trembling, and peeing a bit.
The dozen or so skinks were a giveaway too, shooting out in succession into the air from under the delphiniums as the snake crept along.
On catching it, social media came to mind and in a nod to the great W.C. Fields, I called out: “Jake, son, can you grab the iPad — and there’s an empty whiskey bottle in the recycling.”
Then the bugger bit me through the gloves — the snake, not Jake — and the tingle began as venom seeped into the leather.
“I say, what if you just grab the car keys instead?”
He called out: “But I’ve just poured cold tea into the bott---”
“Car keys, love.”
I had committed that night to a Halloween party with my good mate Ruth, who was coming dressed as a ghost bride. It slipped my mind, and never returned.
An hour later I’m in hospital, having offloaded my son with his mother who — re our impending divorce — was still not quite ... well, you know.
“Can I get you anything?” she asked over the phone.
“Please don’t trouble yourself and please don’t come in.”
Then a voice. Imagine a bloke imitating a nasally old woman: “Have they given you the anti-veneeeeene yet?” from behind the next bed’s curtain, so I never saw her face. I answered in the negative.
Then the conga-line of righteous doctors with their wagging fingers: “Why?” said one. I explained. “Just leave them alone” said another.
“Leave me alone,” I spat back.
“What were you thinking?” said a third. “Of becoming a journo and taking the Mick out of you in my column one day.”
Then — despite my insistence she didn’t — my new girlfriend turned up, and to make it even cuter, leaped up onto the bed beside me.
Then once more: “Have they given you the anti-veneeeeene?”
“Thanks, but they haven’t.”
To girlfriend: “Why don’t you go home?”
A vexing text from the ex came next: “I’ll bring you some chocolate.”
Me (almost snappy): “NO! ... thanks.”
Behind curtain: “Have they given you the ...” etc.
When a bandage comes off, snakebite treatment requires a nurse to sit with you for an hour to see if you drop dead. I wish I had.
The nurse played guitar in a band, so for the next hour chatting about our favourite axes, you should have seen the filthy looks from all the emergency patients lying opposite — some still clutching bleeding wounds, holding detached limbs, etc.
“Have they given you the anti-...”
“Oh for f***.”
Then the distinctly identifiable clomping of pumps down the corridor. The nurse had gone and girlfriend had leapt back up onto bed; selfies this time. I felt faint.
Yep, it happened: former wife rounds the corner and there’s a stunned silence as she went into a torpor from which I’m guessing she has never returned.
Girlfriend stands up with the strength of Solomon and stupidity of Chamberlain, and shakes her hand.
I simply did an emergency astral travel, and had got almost over Florence when another commotion added to this near death experience, along with its double meaning.
I opened my eyes and they were still there, but an angel stood behind them.
“I’m home” I thought, “the venom worked”. But it was Ruth instead, dressed in white wedding dress, toy fangs, make up like a ghoul and covered in fake spider webs, fake spiders and a rubber snake.
A fan club I would wish upon no-one. It all became a blur, but not before: “Have they given you the anti-veneeeeene?”
Chapter closed, on all three of them. Snakes too.