Free The Sausage Tree by Rosalie Medcraft Page B

verandah and the front gate. Geoff bent down and picked up what he thought was a piece of old bark. When it moved and he saw that it was a snake the poor boy nearly had a heart attack and so did Dad. Luckily the snake was still in hibernation and was very sluggish.
    The next time a snake gave us a scare was when Valda lifted up the small washing tub that was upside down on the grass near the back door and found what she thought were two lizards asleep. Recalling stories she had heard that if you held a stick on a lizard’s tail and pushed hard the tail would come off and it would grow another one, Valda went looking for a stick to use when Geoff decided to have a look as he thought it would be most unlikely that two lizards would be asleep together. It was just as well he did because the lizards were in fact one three foot long copper-head snake that Mum immediately killed.
    That same year Dad shot a huge black snake near the big gate. The next year in the summer Joan was sweeping the front verandah when a big snake crawled out of a honeysuckle plant and over her foot. She screamed and screamed and Valda who was going out the front door to talk to her was so terrified by the noise that she began screaming too. Poor Mum rushed from the kitchen calling “What’s wrong, what’s wrong?” Valda, still screaming, managed to tell her “I don’t know, but Joan’s screaming” and then continued screaming. No-one was bitten but we were heard as far awayas the shop and people appeared from everywhere to see who was being murdered!
    The fourth episode happened one day after school when Mum was in town and we saw a big black snake in the front garden. At first we didn’t know what to do but when we saw it slide under the front verandah a decision was quickly made, the snake had to be killed because it could easily bite one of us and Wilma and Peter were only little and had to be protected. We all donned our gumboots and Joan went for the garden spade. Next, we very carefully and cautiously, with our eyes on the snake, prised up and removed the verandah boards that were directly over the snake. Joan thrust the spade as hard as she could on the snake’s back just below his head. Now we had him but what were we going to do next! Valda had the bright idea that as we had lit the stove and the kettles were boiling, we would pour the water on him! We did and he died, then we hooked him out and hung him on the big gate because we’d been told that snakes don’t die till the sun went down. Anyway, we had all seen dead snakes hanging on fences so that was the right thing to do.
    When Mum came off the bus she nearly had a fit when we proudly told her we’d killed the snake. She wanted to know why we hadn’t gone for Mrs Brooks and we truthfully told her there hadn’t been time.
    Another snake episode involved Rosalie. One evening she was crossing the bridge that spanned the ditch that ran along our side of the road when a snake suddenly appeared. When she saw it Rosalie ran up the road with the snake chasing her. The baker who lived across the road ran from his house to see what all the screaming was about. He quickly grabbed a hoe from his garden, ran onto the road and killed the snake. For weeks Rosalie had “snake” nightmares. One night she dreamed that she climbed onto a log to get away from a snake. She was sitting on top of Barbarawho woke her up and told her to get off as she was being squashed!

    On the outskirts of town were old deserted farmhouses that belonged to people who lived in town. In spring the old houses were surrounded by masses of beautiful daffodils and were a picture to behold. They were, to quote William Wordsworth “a host of golden daffodils”. Some old farms didn’t even have houses or sheds to show that someone had once lived there, all that remained were the daffodils and sometimes a lonely chimney stack.
    One particular farm we walked