My Naughty Nonno - Special Edition

2 Snake stories!

Mario is my nonno. I’m writing stories about his life and I’m honoured to share my nonno with my readers. I promise this story is true (although, sometimes I have to fill some gaps with my imagination). Ever since nonno was a child, he has been cheeky. He is the second of five children to Italian immigrants. From a cheeky child, to becoming a bouncer, to making lavender cream he has never lost his touch. Today, I am going to tell you a story about my nonno’s adventures with snakes.

“Mark, you need to take me to the hospital, I just got bitten by a brown snake”.

The eastern brown snake is one of the most venomous snakes in the world, it can kill a grown man in under 20 minutes, and nonno had just been bitten on the hand. But we will return to this part of the story later. First, I want to tell you some stories about nonno and his love affair with terrorising one of the worlds most dangerous snakes.

Mario has always been fascinated with snakes, and in his earlier days he loved to terrorise them. South Australia is famous for having some of the world’s most deadly and venomous snakes, and nonno quite enjoyed grabbing them by the tail and picking them up as a youngster. We’ve already established in the first Naughty Nonno that Mario was a naughty kid, but at twelve, well, let’s say he wasn’t improving!

Mario was about 12 and still living in Adelaide, when on one particular day, in the early 1960s, he was walking through the bush, around the Campbelltown area looking for something to chase, grab, break or throw. It was a warm summer day and he would be bored out of his mind if he couldn’t see a snake today, it was perfect weather.

If you were to visit Campbelltown today, you would see a very established suburb with a European flavour. Many of the small businesses reflect this heritage as well, but back in the 60s, it was native scrub and market gardens and was the epicenter of Adelaide’s italian community.

He’d been out for an hour or two and was starting to get bored and lose hope. Then suddenly, out of nowhere he heard something in the bush rustle and nonno almost stepped on what he thought was a broken branch, until it started moving.

Nonno and the snake, both as startled as each other, did a couple of back flips (each in their own different ways) in panic, before regaining composure.

Enjoying the rush of adrenalin, Mario grabbed a broken branch from a gum tree, and I’m pretty sure you’ll know what happened next. He started to chase the snake.

“YAAAA!” Mario charged.

He threw the branch and it wasn’t a very happy ending for the snake.

“Who knew a lump of wood could kill a snake with one throw!” he thought to himself.

“Bulls eye! Hey, I might show our neighbors this beauty!” Mario proudly said to himself. Mario thought he might bring the snake home to show his friend Robert (who would later become his brother-in-law), and Robert’s parents. Robert’s mum, Teresa, was terrified of snakes and Mario couldn’t wait to scare the life out of her with it.

Now in case you are wondering, technically, it wasn’t illegal to kill brown snakes in South Australia until the passing of the National Parks and Wildlife Act 1972.

Note:It’s important to understand that snakes retain their venom in their fangs for quite some time after death, and many people actually die after they handle a dead snake.

He walked down the road to their house with the snake dragging along the ground behind him. As he neared his neighbours, Teresa came to greet him but not for long.

“HEY! Look, Teresa, I got a snake!”

When she noticed it, she was screaming so loud, and yelling, exactly what I would do if I encountered a snake like that. She slammed the door on Mario and kept screaming and carrying on from inside.

From that day forward (and even still today) she will never open the door to Nonno until she is sure he is not carrying a dead snake and she loves to still remind Mario about this story!

ANOTHER STORY ABOUT UNLUCKY SNAKES

Mario had Furrow Irrigation down the block and because of that snakes were always attracted to it.

Snakes love water, if they were thirsty they would go down and get it, but Mario would make sure they were never going there, a snake's worst fear is and always will be Mario.

Mario would always bring his dog with him so if he had to kill a snake it was because he has a dog and a dog is very intrigued by snakes.

Many times he would go down there and a snake would be there, I’m sure Mario was overjoyed for how many times he’s seen snakes, he would probably tell you every single snake he ever saw, although that may never happen due to how many snakes he’s actually seen, most likely over a hundred snakes. I know! Crazy, I would be proud if I have seen ten snakes in my lifetime.

He would grab a snake by the tail and throw it away, a bit crazy if you ask me, I would have just ran home screaming.

This one particular time, he was watching the water very carefully and then his brother Jack went behind him about twenty metres, and a snake tried to go in the pipe.

“Another snake, well I can add that to the list of Unlucky Snakes I have had” Mario shrugged.

So he grabbed in on the tail, like he always does, and swung it around and around and then let it go and that snake went flying, far, far, far away but not too far as it smashed Jack on the head and knocked his hat off.

“Oooh,” Mario winced.

Jack stood there motionless for a minute to actually get the fact a real life snake hit him on the head, but that didn’t last long.

Luckily it didn’t wrap around his neck, otherwise that would be a whole different story.

He was jumping up and down, up and down, screaming and yelling, running around.

“MARIO!!!” Jack glared at him.

“Oops,” Mario giggled, “But you have to admit it was pretty funny!”

Jack sighed,

“Mario, how many times do you have to go catch snakes! I bet you soon a snake will bite you if you don’t stop trying to fling them around and hit your brothers in the HEAD,”

Which leads us back to the start of this story, when nonno finally ran out of luck. But you will need to wait for the next edition of Naughty Nonno to find out what happened…..

See you then!