The most Australian story I know

And it's a doozy

I had just come back from the mid-semester break and was carrying bags out of the car when my friend Becky came looking for me. She didn’t waste time with pleasantries.

“Come to my cottage,” she said. “I’ve got something to show you.”

It’s a long drive from Sydney to Wagga Wagga, especially when you’re a red P plater forced to tootle around at 90km/hr. But it didn’t matter that I was tired, or that I had a lot of unpacking to do. If Becky had something to show you, you followed her.

Suffice to say that Becky was a consistently entertaining agent of chaos.

The year was 2008 and I was studying Television Production at Charles Sturt University. The campus was an enormous, a sprawling plot of agricultural land, big enough to have its own postcode. On one side of the property we had our library, pub, lecture halls and classrooms. On the other was our accommodation where hundred students lived crammed together in little houses, dorms, and residential halls.

My cottage’s living room

At this time, I lived in cottage number 330. Becky was directly next door in 331. We walked through her living room, turned left down the hall, and then stepped into her bedroom. She closed the door behind her. There was an esky sitting in the middle of her floor.

“Check this out,” she said.

I’m not sure what I was expecting to be in that esky. Probably something normal, like alcohol or food. I certainly didn’t think there would be an enormous, dead snake with a very mushy head inside. Becky could barely control her glee.

“My dad saw it on the side of the road and grabbed it,” she said.

According to Becky, her dad was driving around his small, country town of Moulamein when he spotted the roadkill. For reasons known only to himself, he pulled over, grabbed the reptile, and drove off. Did Becky’s dad have the empty esky in the back of his car ready for such fortuitous roadside gifts? Or did he plonk the snake somewhere on the upholstery? If I once knew the answer to this question, alas, it’s lost to time.

When he was back at home, Becky’s dad must have generously asked around if anyone needed a dead snake. And yes, actually, Becky did indeed have use for it. You see, she had a friend who had severe ophidiophobia and this would be the perfect way to torment him.

So the snake was plonked in an esky (without ice) and transported to Wagga Wagga, a four hour dive away.

After this explanation, Becky and I stared down at the dead animal.

“It smells a bit,” she said.

“Yeah,” I replied. “It does”.

But we weren’t going to be rushed by the mere fact that the snake was rapidly decaying in a warm, plastic tub. If we were going to use this roadkill to the full extent of its potential, we’d need to do some planning. But that was a job for the next day. So we unpacked, probably went through a few boxes of wine with our friends, and decided to reconvene the next day.

Goon poured straight into the biggest glass I owned.

It’s funny, the mere glimpse of a Fruity Lexia label will have me dry heaving now. But in those days I could sink a bucket of goon, sit in a small space next to a fetid dead snake and feel completely fine. Which is exactly what I, and a small committee of my peers, did. The people who were in that room are now doctors, parents, pharmacists and generally responsible adults. I got in touch with Becky and asked if it was okay to use her name – she was fine with it – but I reckon the rest would probably like to be removed from this whole sordid affair. I’ve given everyone else who was involved a pseudonym.

I often hear people complain about university group assignments being a pain, but we collectively proved that doesn’t need to be the case. It turns out people just need the right motivation. A shared cause. For us, the goal of scaring the shit out of our snake-phobic friend Mark was the incentive we needed to become a supportive and collaborative team.

In a long but productive meeting we workshopped several ideas for the dead snake. We seriously considered hiding it in his room under some clothes, but that meant we wouldn’t have experienced the exquisite joy of seeing Mark find the snake. Were we also worried about his clothes being on top of a rotting animal? I’d like to think so, but I don’t think this factored into our decision making.

Eventually, we agreed on a more theatrical approach. We would attach the dead snake to his door knob using fishing line while Mark was in his room. Someone would then yell ‘snake! snake!’, hopefully prompting him to investigate the commotion. The door swinging open would cause the snake to move towards Mark as though it were alive. He would be terrified, we would laugh, and then live in fear of the inevitable retaliation.

We took a million photos at university, this was the most normal one I could find of me and Becky

We all had our roles to play, but things quickly ground to a halt after the fishing line was procured. How were we going to attach it to the snake? There wasn’t much of a head left to tie it to. The solution, we collectively decided, was a hook pushed through the goey remains of the skull. No one was willing to touch the dead reptile except for Becky who was nonplussed by the grizzly job. I remember being in awe of her complete lack of squeamishness. Farm kids are made differently, I suppose.

Everything else went mostly to plan. I remember thinking the acting of the people who shouted ‘snake!’ left something to be desired, but Mark was eventually coaxed into opening his door. Recollections of exactly what happened next differ. I recall he had a minor shock, and then immediately slammed his door shut. Others remember Mark, scared out of his nut, kicked the flyscreen out of his window, jumped onto the street, and ran for the hills.

Perhaps our memories are fuzzy because of the horror of what happened next.

Mark, our intended quarry, was out of reach. Alan, one of the boys involved in the prank, must have found this disappointing. Perhaps it was adrenaline, perhaps it was the devil, but he suddenly lost all revulsion to the dead snake. He fearlessly picked it up, detached it from the doorknob and ran indiscriminately into the gathered group of his former conspirators.

This was a moment of pure terror.

The floppy dead snake was a weapon none of us were willing to face. We scattered like he was an active shooter, zig-zagging back to the safety of our lockable rooms. High on power, unwilling to let us escape, Alan pegged the dead snake at our backs. It didn’t matter that we were his comrades – all loyalty had disappeared. I didn’t risk looking back to see if anyone was hit, I ran into my room slammed the door and locked all possible entry points. It was chaos. It was disgusting.

It still makes me laugh.

I think of this whole anecdote as a shamefully amusing, somewhat regrettable university incident that I have firmly put behind me. I’m an adult now, you see. Also, it’s hard to take a moral high ground against the likes of RFK and his dead bear shenanigans when you’ve been involved in at least one roadkill prank yourself.

But this story does have a footnote.

About seven years ago there was as a video that went viral on social media. In it, a man sits in a field, recording his left leg. A snake has slithered up his pants and only the end of its tail is visible, swirling around near the poor bloke’s shoes.

“This is another fine mess I’ve got myself into,” he says. “I was untangling a bit of wire from under the ute, and this fucking great tiger snake the dogs chased up my fucking leg when I wasn’t looking.”

He sounds panicked and a bit out of breath. He says there’s no one he can call for help. There’s only one thing to do – pull the snake out himself.

“Wish me luck,” he says as his shaky hand goes towards the snake.

He counts down from three, grabs the snake by the tail and flings it into the sand a few metres away. He then launches himself up, and dances away from the animal, swearing but – incredibly – unharmed.

That man? It was Becky’s dad. That snake? Also roadkill.

His acting was totally convincing. So convincing, in fact, it was picked up by news outlets in Australia and around the world.

So I know about two dead snake pranks perpetrated by this family. How many others don’t I know about? I reckon many, many more. When most people see a dead snake they see – well – a dead snake. But not Becky’s dad. He sees an opportunity. A chance for mischief. Is there a lesson in that? Honestly, I’m not sure.

But never say that Aussie Larrikinism is dead. It’s just hanging around in Moulamein.