It is always wise here to carry a torch when stumbling about outside at night. However I am usually looking down, not up.
The other night, it was merely out of the corner of my eye that the top of one verandah post looked different, amongst the labyrinth of twining vines and leaves that encase them.
Indeed it was different: decorated by a diamond python, who slowly curled up almost out of sight.
Wrapped around itself into an extraordinarily tight bundle, that’s where it stayed all the next day, although as the day warmed up, the tin must have been too hot.
I assumed it had fed the night before and was quietly digesting. But I’d kept checking its whereabouts — just in case.
Next evening the torch revealed that it was hungry again and on the hunt. Poised motionless, flexed ready to strike, above the erratically filled bird feeder, where small marsupials might come to nibble leftover grains.
Whether it was successful or not, I haven’t seen it since. But I still look, above the door for example, as I go outside at night!