Just a mild heart attack

I'd just picked some onion shallots from the garden (the first I've grown) and was giving them a bit of a trim outside the kitchen door.  I heard a substantial shifting sound just next to where I was standing, as if the dogs had bumped into something.  But they were inside and the thing that shifted was our two surf skis, which for some reason are up next to the house, just along from the sliding door that leads into the kitchen.  I yelled out for Shaun to come have a look, as I thought it was a rat in the skis.  He came outside and was peering under one end and I was peering under the other, and then I saw it - a snake.  Then once I'd recovered and come back  to have another look, as it was clearly trying to catch said rat, Shaun saw the head and realised it wasn't our resident roof python, but a brown snake.

So one heart attack later, I was inside, looking out the the sliding doors as Shaun bravely offered to scare it away and towards the bush.  But by the time he went back to go and shake the other end of the ski, the snake had turned right around and was coming out his end.  If he had a heart attack at this point, he hid it well.  The snake perhaps had its own conniption as it turned around again and headed in my direction (though I was safely behind the glass)

Shaun's pretty good with snake ID as he used to breed them growing up (that and poisonous spiders - and if I'd known any of that before we'd married.....well).  So he thinks it was the aggressive and deadly Eastern Brown snake, but hasn't completely ruled out the more deadly but less in your face Taipan.  So needless to say, going outside the kitchen door to pick my herbs has become a snatch and grab exercise over the last few days.