Giles Watson's poetry and prose
What Adam and I brought home
Adam was well named, for he was a rascal and a sinner. My first memory of him was the sight of him clambering back over the fence after he had been caught trespassing in the garden. He was as wild as the little rabbit kitten he had been raising, which also once escaped into our garden, perhaps to cavort with Benji, my own, rather larger rabbit. I took one look at Adam’s rabbit, which was an identical colour to my own, and rushed inside, shouting, “Mummy, Benji’s shrunk!”, until Benji himself lolloped out of the undergrowth and stood beside Adam’s little runaway.
As Adam grew older, his misdemeanours grew proportionally in magnitude. I was, by comparison, very naive, and I was very surprised and bemused some years later when he tried to sell me a foil sausage full of weed. I asked him how much he wanted for it, and he said, “$20”. Twenty dollars was, at that time, more money than I had ever dreamed of. Not that I would have dared to smoke his grass anyway.
Adam and I did, however, have one thing in common. We both liked to turn over stones. Across the road from our houses in suburban Canberra, there was an area of “waste-land”, a veritable “brown-field” site covered with tussocky grass, and stones – oh, so many stones. Some of the stones were small, and I could manage these myself, but others were massive, and the two of us would labour at them, levering them with sticks of ancient, ringbarked gumtrees. Mostly, the things we found underneath them were cockroaches, or the larvae of Christmas beetles, which we thought were the real witchetty grubs. Sometimes – quite often, in fact – there were lizards: slippery brown and gold skinks which surrendered their tails if you grabbed them in the wrong place (we never grabbed them in the wrong place), and bluetongues which liked to be fed on snails and bananas. Once, there was a snake.
It was, admittedly, a very little snake, but I wasn’t going to risk anything by touching it. I knew that pythons were non-venomous, but this wasn’t a python, and just about every other Australian snake I knew was venomous to some degree. But Adam plunged straight underneath the stone, and grabbed it expertly behind the jaw. To this day, I don’t know how I let him persuade me to take it home and keep it for a pet. Perhaps it was because I knew that the “waste land” was due to be annexed to the local horticultural centre, and turned into lawn: no place for snakes. But whatever the reason, the two of us marched off to my place: Adam ahead of me, the snake with its mouth open, its body coiled around his fingers; me trailing behind, trying to think of more excuses for not taking the snake home. Not that I was a coward. Secretly, half of me did want to take the snake home, because I wanted to identify it.
Believe it or not, my parents were used to this sort of thing, and when we got to my place, my father dug out an old fish-tank which we could use as a terrarium, and the snake was soon installed inside it. For a while it seemed sleepy, and sat basking under the fish-tank light, but gradually it began to wake up.
We first knew for sure that we were in for trouble when my father walked past the tank later the day, and the snake reared up like a cobra and struck at the side of the tank. A thin trickle of venom ran down the glass, and at last we got out the identification guides. Eventually, we found it. Adam had brought a baby brown snake into our house. Only a baby, perhaps, but still one of the deadliest snakes in the world. We knew then that we would have to release it as soon as possible, so we went away to discuss where, and how.
When we returned, the snake was gone, and the cover-glass slipped to one side at the top of the tank. It took us hours to search under every chair and table, behind the curtains, under the fridge. Eventually we found it, curled on top of a plastic bag in my mother’s sewing room. Of course, Adam had gone home by this stage, and it was left to my father to put on some thick leather gloves and pick up the snake, holding it deftly behind the jaw, just like Eric Worrell.
Of course, the next thing a normal family would do would be to get the snake out of the house as soon as possible, but we weren’t a normal family. The next thing we did was to get the camera. My father was still holding the snake, so he couldn’t take the photograph. My mother had suddenly shown considerable enthusiasm for cleaning behind the fridge. So it was me with the camera, doing one of my very first macro shots. Perhaps I was ten years old at the time. Those are my father's hands.
I wonder what happened to Adam.
What Adam and I brought home
Adam was well named, for he was a rascal and a sinner. My first memory of him was the sight of him clambering back over the fence after he had been caught trespassing in the garden. He was as wild as the little rabbit kitten he had been raising, which also once escaped into our garden, perhaps to cavort with Benji, my own, rather larger rabbit. I took one look at Adam’s rabbit, which was an identical colour to my own, and rushed inside, shouting, “Mummy, Benji’s shrunk!”, until Benji himself lolloped out of the undergrowth and stood beside Adam’s little runaway.
As Adam grew older, his misdemeanours grew proportionally in magnitude. I was, by comparison, very naive, and I was very surprised and bemused some years later when he tried to sell me a foil sausage full of weed. I asked him how much he wanted for it, and he said, “$20”. Twenty dollars was, at that time, more money than I had ever dreamed of. Not that I would have dared to smoke his grass anyway.
Adam and I did, however, have one thing in common. We both liked to turn over stones. Across the road from our houses in suburban Canberra, there was an area of “waste-land”, a veritable “brown-field” site covered with tussocky grass, and stones – oh, so many stones. Some of the stones were small, and I could manage these myself, but others were massive, and the two of us would labour at them, levering them with sticks of ancient, ringbarked gumtrees. Mostly, the things we found underneath them were cockroaches, or the larvae of Christmas beetles, which we thought were the real witchetty grubs. Sometimes – quite often, in fact – there were lizards: slippery brown and gold skinks which surrendered their tails if you grabbed them in the wrong place (we never grabbed them in the wrong place), and bluetongues which liked to be fed on snails and bananas. Once, there was a snake.
It was, admittedly, a very little snake, but I wasn’t going to risk anything by touching it. I knew that pythons were non-venomous, but this wasn’t a python, and just about every other Australian snake I knew was venomous to some degree. But Adam plunged straight underneath the stone, and grabbed it expertly behind the jaw. To this day, I don’t know how I let him persuade me to take it home and keep it for a pet. Perhaps it was because I knew that the “waste land” was due to be annexed to the local horticultural centre, and turned into lawn: no place for snakes. But whatever the reason, the two of us marched off to my place: Adam ahead of me, the snake with its mouth open, its body coiled around his fingers; me trailing behind, trying to think of more excuses for not taking the snake home. Not that I was a coward. Secretly, half of me did want to take the snake home, because I wanted to identify it.
Believe it or not, my parents were used to this sort of thing, and when we got to my place, my father dug out an old fish-tank which we could use as a terrarium, and the snake was soon installed inside it. For a while it seemed sleepy, and sat basking under the fish-tank light, but gradually it began to wake up.
We first knew for sure that we were in for trouble when my father walked past the tank later the day, and the snake reared up like a cobra and struck at the side of the tank. A thin trickle of venom ran down the glass, and at last we got out the identification guides. Eventually, we found it. Adam had brought a baby brown snake into our house. Only a baby, perhaps, but still one of the deadliest snakes in the world. We knew then that we would have to release it as soon as possible, so we went away to discuss where, and how.
When we returned, the snake was gone, and the cover-glass slipped to one side at the top of the tank. It took us hours to search under every chair and table, behind the curtains, under the fridge. Eventually we found it, curled on top of a plastic bag in my mother’s sewing room. Of course, Adam had gone home by this stage, and it was left to my father to put on some thick leather gloves and pick up the snake, holding it deftly behind the jaw, just like Eric Worrell.
Of course, the next thing a normal family would do would be to get the snake out of the house as soon as possible, but we weren’t a normal family. The next thing we did was to get the camera. My father was still holding the snake, so he couldn’t take the photograph. My mother had suddenly shown considerable enthusiasm for cleaning behind the fridge. So it was me with the camera, doing one of my very first macro shots. Perhaps I was ten years old at the time. Those are my father's hands.
I wonder what happened to Adam.