"DROP THE REPTILE!"
As Australians, we really do not do ourselves a lot of favours, internationally, with our image. Croc-wrestling hicks and roo-boxing yobbos is the usual export image, or else bronzed, bosomy, bikini-clad surf-chicks who round up sheep as jillaroos in their spare time. This is why a lot of intellectuals leave the country in disgust (eg Germaine Greer, Robert Hughes, Dame Edna). It's called the 'Cultural Cringe'.
Poor Constable Dale Howe of the Northern Territory had a novelty-news-item-moment last Saturday around midnight. While on patrol, he pulled over a car that had been swerving all over the road and told the driver to get out. Of course the teenage driver was drunk, and so he began the usual breathalizing and booking procedures. Anyway, suddenly a 1metre long brown snake appeared out of the dark and the kid saw it and raced to pick the thing up! Grabbing its head he brandished it at the police officer like a weapon.
"Drop the reptile!"
I bet you've never heard that one on Starsky and Hutch or Miami Vice, or CSI before! (Though you may have heard it at a Britney Spears concert.) By the way, FedEx was on a CSI episode, did you know that? She sure dropped him. "Drop the cold-blooded, legless animal of the class reptilia, the order Squamata the sub order Serpentes, and of ethnic-appearance." Why couldn't the policeman have just said "Drop the snake"??
Well, you know what happened next don't you? He threatened to shoot him. (All my dear little American readers are now imagining an arsenal of hand guns) but fear not, Constable Howe is a very sensible chap who only pulled a can of pepper spray on the kid, who, freaking out that this would enrage the reptile, ran off into the bush with it, with poor old Constable Howe giving a long and fruitless chase!
Which just goes to prove that a snake in the hand is worth it at 2am in the bush.
Must dash, the brainy plane is about to leave.
posted by anonymous jones @ 10:15 AM
4 Comments:
Aren't those brown snakes deadly? so the kid could have been charged with assault with a deadly weapon, right? Hell, I'd have been the one running, I don't care for the leggless wonders myself. We've got posion snakes of our own down here and I have a healthy respect for them. The kid deserved getting bitten himself.
The South is known for nabobs or our own, every one's heard of Bubba...........
Nabob must be your version of a yobbo, also known as a bogan (slight nuance of difference but we'll not go into that here).
Yes, I guess the snake was highly venomous, we have 9/10 of the world's most deadly snakes here: weird that we are proud of it (now, if only they had introduced that last snake instead of the cane toad..)
"Drop the snake" might have been interpreted as a proposition (men in uniform do have to choose their words carefully, you know), especially if it was a snake in the hand at 2am. Either that or it was the vocabular confuscation of his training shining through. A car is a "vehicle", a gun is a "weapon"; "snake" just doesn't have enough syllables.
In Canada, we don't have deadly reptiles or bugs. Australians I've always figured are the most fearless in the world. There was a saying I've heard that goes " If you see a nervious Australian you should be terrified". That said, I've only heard "Drop the reptile" once and tht was a charge for indecent exposure, i'd rather not get into...
On another note, you're right about John Myung of Dream Theater, he could be utilized more and when I saw him in concert he was unbelievable. I've never seen a bss player maneuver a instrument like he does.
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