This is the tale of an amazing natural sight I saw yesterday.
It’s 9am on a Friday morning. The missus has left for work, I’ve gotten the kids up, fed and dressed and it’s time for me to start the farm chores of the day.
I grab my keys and go open the shed door, anxious to get the more onerous of the jobs over with before the temperature reaches the forecast 37 degree’s – typical for the Mallee in January. Just inside the door is my big beer fridge and close to that is a black crate I’ve been using to sort my Transformer books and DVD’s (yes, as well as being a hobby farmer I’m also a big TF nerd). I notice immediately that there has been a big web spun between the crate and the fridge that wasn’t there the night before. There are a few bits of twig and dry grass in it. Also a great big Redback Spider is busy in the web, hungrily sucking on the tail of… a snake.
A snake.
A bloody snake!
I’ve got a real thing about snakes. I didn’t used to, affording them due respect so they wouldn’t bite me but otherwise not worrying about them. However several years ago I lost an immediate family member to a bite by a juvenile brown snake. Combine that with the fact that I live on a farm and have two small children, I’m pretty damn paranoid about them now. Don’t want to lose my kids or for them to lose their dad the way I lost an older sibling.
I recoil immediately but morbid curiosity quickly brings me back (that and I’ll want to be able to grab a beer that evening). It is indeed a young snake and quite dead. We only get three types of snake on our farm that I’ve seen; brown snakes, red-bellied black snakes and blind snakes. While I initially think it is a brown snake, as they are the ones we seem to get most commonly, I realize upon closer inspection this is a Blind Snake, in particular a Ramphotyphlops australis. I’ve usually encountered them when I’ve been digging up various big bull ant nests around the farm but they are known to come to the surface on warm humid nights, which is what we had experienced the night before. It’s grey, about 20 centimeters long and as stated, very dead.
The Redback Spider, which judging from it’s size and the nearby egg sacs is a female, has cocooned the Blind Snake’s head thickly in webbing and the rest of the body to a lesser extent. The snake at its lowest point is hanging about an inch above the floor and the spider is chowing down on the tip of its tail – maybe where the skin is thinnest and easiest to suck the undoubtedly now pureed innards out of. It’s a pretty disturbing sight but fascinating none-the-less.
I dash back to the house to grab my phone to take a picture. Of course with a child’s instinct to run towards danger both my kids follow me back out. I manage to take a few photos whilst blocking my daughter (my son is old enough to know if Dad says ‘Stay back – it’s dangerous!’ to do so but my daughter just gives a frustrated yell and tries to push past to see what all the fuss is about). I then reach for my watering can. Whilst having a spider that can take down snakes seems to be very desirable, having one right in the doorway to the shed all the family goes in and out of 50 times a day is most certainly not. I instruct the little ones to look away and then Daddy turns spider, snake and web all into a memory with a couple of decisive bangs.
And that’s the story, one of the most amazing predator-prey events I’ve seen up close! It even led me to make this meme:
After all this I wondered how the spider managed to get the snake off the floor and into its web. Subsequent research I’ve done says that Latrodectus hasseltii (Redbacks) attacking and killing snakes is a very rare occurrence but it does happen. I believe the incident I witnessed however may actually be the only recorded case of a Redback taking down this particular species of snake. Apparently the process with other species usually involves the Redback turning it’s abdomen towards a snake slithering on the ground after it gets caught in a trap line and shoots web all over it. As the snake thrashes and becomes more entangled the Redback slowly hoists it up into the main web where it can then bite, kill and feed at its leisure. Despite the fact that Blind Snakes are not venomous I assume this happened in the same manner and it makes the above meme all the more appropriate, don’t you think?
Care to comment on the story you just read or have a similar story of your own? Would love to read it in the comments section below!
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Pretty amazing little brother, although I am happy it was your place not mine!!