I have always wanted a Weber BBQ. This Christmas, Santa was very generous and bought me a really small one... It is cute, and has a lid that you close to cook your food.
We had one meal from it and as it was so hot recently thought I'd try the roasting feature. This meant I preheat the BBQ, then put the chook on and hey presto you have bbq chook.

So, I go over to brand new bbq, and hit the button to light the gas. Something strange here as our black Labrador was very interested in the BBQ, and as it was new it did not have in the way of food smell yet. Our Labrador likes food!

Anyway, I hit the button, and blue flame came out of the jets.... and something reasonably large moved around under the gas jet. Hmmmm. Time to turn it off quickly. To my surprise when I lifted the grill plate I found an unhappy green tree snake, who was keen to leave, which he did! This is why said Labrador was interested!

The green tree snake [Dendrelaphis punctulatus] is one of our most common snakes in the Biosphere. They can reach up to two meters, but are more commonly seen at around 1.2 meters. Whilst colour is variable [as with most snakes] this fellow is a dull green/black/olive on the back and often with a quite striking yellow on the belly. They are very slender, and agile. They are diurnal and adept at climbing... trees, shrubs, verandahs, chairs and BBQs! If threatened they puff themselves up to look bigger and expose a blueish colour between the scales. They can also emit an offensive odour from anal glands as a further defence mechanism. Unfortunately they were wrongly called "Yellow-bellied black snake" and were killed as a result. They are non-venomous and harmless.

This one was resting on a table at Noosa Landcare's office in Pomona...