Spring!

Even though we had some late winter frosts and a chill in the air, spring has been around for a while. The wattles have been in flower for what seems like forever and all the almond trees have been oh so casually scattering their delicate pink and white petals for a week or two.
The days have been warming up and this means not only buds aplenty but lizards are emerging from hibernation, as are their less popular cousins. Last Friday I had to herd a bearded dragon off the road. He didn't take kindly to this and puffed up like a zeppelin (I thought he was going to 'go' me) and then hissed like he had a slow leak. Eventually he scooted off to the side of the road where he glared at me balefully.
Later that day as I was driving along I thought to myself, 'hmmm...well if the lizards are awake then surely the snakes won't be too far behind.' The thought was no sooner in my mind, still hanging in a little thought bubble above my head when I saw on the road in front of me a brown snake*, about seven feet long. And so I ran over it. Before all those herpetologists get upset let me say it was an accident (really) and the reason I know this is that I didn't reverse back over it to make sure it was dead like some other people around here (yes I know we're not supposed to but what would you do?). I did look in my rear vision mirror though just to make sure that it wasn't somehow clinging to the underside of my car just waiting for the right moment to introduce itself.

*according to some internet sites (and it's on the internet so it must be true) the brown snake is the 2nd deadliest land snake in the world. I think I need to go and lie die in a dark room for a while and think about almond blossoms.