Goodbye Valentine!

We discussed what to do with the snake last night.Putting it in the fridge apparently would have put it to sleep and eventually would have killed it but in the end we decided to let it go.I wondered how subdued it would be this morning left in the plastic box all night...but it was not subdued at all and jumped at you every time you went near it. It was very aggressive for a tiny little thing.We drove about 2 km down to the river at Glen Aplin, Will wanted some sand from the river bank to make some plaster...there by the river I put on some gloves, took the lid off and let 'Valentine' go. He/She slithered off quickly into the undergrowth.Back home a little later I bumped into Mother or Father down by the dam. I was being very careful and looking for snakes but I still did not see it until it suddenly slithered off into the reeds. It looked brown to me in the instant I saw it but I could not be sure. I got Will to come and have a look and peering carefully into the reeds you could just make out its scaly skin. Will thought it looked brown too.It is all quite unsettling. Female Brown Snakes produce  between 10 and 40 eggs which are left to hatch on their own and the baby snakes are completely independent from birth.  I really hope there are not another 39 slithering about close by.Ok...the positive thing is it slithered away from me but it was very close to the house and the baby one in the house is all a bit too close for comfort. I am now constantly on edge and looking every where I step...indoors and out.We found a skink trapped in the bath on the rock. The sides were too slippy for it to climb out...it was lucky I spotted it, it would not have lasted long without food or water in this heat. Will scooped it out and it scurried away too.We had a very lazy morning...inter-netting and reading but after lunch I heard Will with the chainsaw. He was trying to find a pole to raise the roof a bit in the dining room as one of the roof joists is sagging a little...but in the end we decided against it  and tackled the sagging verandah roof at the side again.We had raised it by putting new poles under the corrugated iron...it was one of the first jobs we did at Frogknot last year. It was a good job then ,but it was still not high enough in one corner and some rain was still flowing back into the wall. Today we raised the corner a few more inches and then Will removed some of the corrugated iron sheets to allow access for us to release the roof from its supporting cross poles. These poles had sunk with the wall and were dragging it down. We raised the whole side roof and sawed through the cross poles releasing them from the sagging wall and pushed them up and fastened them to the newly raised beam. We are not quite finished but ran out of daylight and so we will have to finish off tomorrow. It looks great though and is a much better job than the repair we did before.As he removed some of the roofing sheets Will said "It's bound to rain now," and it did...but only a little. We need some decent rain now so we can see if it works.