Worth mentioning

sternus1 starts with ...
Just thought I'd warn anybody who might be in a similar situation:

I have a lot of deep holes dug in anticipation for a new dragon fruit grove(for the posts). They're about 3 feet, dug with a post hole digger so the sides are very sheer.

Anyway for the last month I've been rescuing wildlife that keep falling into them, despite my efforts to cover them with concrete blocks etc. So far I've pulled out a few different species of frogs and today, this very lovely but very pissed off common Green tree snake, who was pretty furious about the whole ordeal and understandly so because a hole in the ground is the last place it wanted it to be, probably. Anyway, food for thought--cover any deep holes that might trap wildlife and if you can't, make sure nothing has fallen in from time to time.

Pictures - Click to enlarge
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sternus1 says...
Don't be ridiculous, of course not.

And yes, with browns, all bets are off. If you ever move out the suburbs, you'll learn that sometimes you have to do things you don't want to, otherwise bad things happen--like spending thousands of dollars on antivenin shots for dogs bitten by browns. You'll earn your right to be holier than thou when keeping your principles stands to cost you something, but not before. So please point your wagging finger up your arse. Cheers.

s

sternus1 says...
Thanks for your concern Al, but I think I can correct this with some wind chimes and a new Teddy bear. Man.

s

sternus1 says...
Ok Mother Teresa. No doubt you eat meat, and therein buy into the wholesale slaughter of all kinds of animals every day. It also means you support a system which is directly responsible for the decimation and displacement of a range of native species through the habitat destruction caused by the need for grazing pastures and factory farming. This process is exactly the kind that drives animals such as Brown snakes out of their natural environments and into the sharpened shovels of people like me.
See how that works?

Now,You're no doubt pragmatic about it, because you want to keep eating meat. You'll rationalize it. However, this is irresolvable in relation your concept of conservation. Essentially, what you're doing is choosing to veto your principles so that you can be gratified by an activity that is contradictory to them.

Similarly, I do kill brown snakes. I pragmatize the act. I reason that the risk presented by them to my pets, and my neighbor's kids, is unacceptable. I wonder if this is a conversation you'd like to have:

'I'm sorry your 5 year old daughter died of envenomation, buddy, but I stand by my principles in not killing Brown snakes'. Yeah, not thanks.

Now, you might say something along the lines of 'A thing can't help being born what it is' and you'd be right. And what of that? Do you not kill, routinely, cockroaches, flies, mosquitoes, all kinds of grazing insects without reference to this observation all of the time? What you are doing is exercising selectivity over the kinds of organisms you kill and those you don't according to a criteria that is defined in pragmatic terms and relates to things such as risk, and your own personal needs, wants, and interests. That doesn't make you different from me, or anybody else who splurges on a lobster dinner whilst totally aware of the fact that somewhere a child in Africa is dying of Aids in the dirt, and the money used to pay for that dinner could not only have saved that life in an immediate sense, but changed it for the future. There are three laws of humanity that you need to come to terms with:

a) People naturally favor themselves
B People are naturally Hierarchical
c) People follow the path of least resistance.

The difference between you and me, Gimme, is that I don't pretend to be better than anybody else.

I also don't kill any other kind of snake, because there is no sense in it.

This post started out as a message about making sure things like snakes and frogs don't fall into dug holes and starve to death. Apparently this was enough to incite you to quip like a menopausal, 40'ish unpretty and recently divorced postal worker, and now here we are.

I'm not hard to get along with Gimme, all anybody has to do is play fair jive.