This is another letter from your Uncle Roger. I hope you liked my last letter about cooking spinach. This time my letter is about the snake I found in the firewood heap. I suppose this snake thought my wood-heap would be a nice place to hide and spend the Winter. Snakes are not very active during the winter-time and so they usually find a quiet place to hide until the warmer spring weather. This snake didn't know that during the Winter I would be using all my firewood and his hiding-place in the wood-heap would be discovered.

I've sent you some photos of this snake for you to see. This is a carpet snake very much like the one we saw in the back garden of your home in Brisbane when I came to visit. Do you remember? - Your Mummy took some photos of it.

Carpet snakes are not poisonous; - they can bite, and they will bite if we don't handle them gently, but if we pick the snake up carefully and hold it by the neck it is quite safe and there is no need to be afraid of them. Carpet snakes go hunting for mice and so they are useful creatures which are good to have around. Sometimes I find a carpet snake in the shed here on the farm looking for mice and so I just let them stay and find somewhere to hide amongst all the things in the shed. They are called – CARPET – snakes because they have a pretty pattern on their skin like the pattern on a carpet; so they are called carpet snakes. 

Carpet snakes also catch small birds, but they have to be quick and so they just keep very still, waiting and hoping that some little bird or animal doesn't see them and gets close enough to catch them. Carpet snakes are included in the kind of snakes called – PYTHON.

Pythons often grow very large, and there are many different kinds; they live in tropical jungles of Africa and Asia and in Borneo in South-east Asia. Some pythons grow to a great size, sometimes as much as 30 feet long. There is another very large snake which we call a BOA - these snakes are found in South America and they grow very big. Here in Australia snakes of the python family grow to about 6 or 8 feet long.

I heard you have been helping Daddy and Mummy repairing the roof of your house; and Aisha, I saw the photos of you doing some painting; - and Brioni, I saw some photos of you learning to measure with the tape-measure. I'm very pleased to see that you are learning new things.

I've also sent some pictures of my broad beans and cabbages growing in plant pots; see how much they have grown since the last time you saw them.

This is the end of my letter now. Remember - I love you all very, very much.

Uncle Roger