There’s my inner tube

I use old bicycle inner tubes to tie plants against stakes because they provide a flexible support that allows the plant to grow and does little damage to the bark. Also, I have a lot of them. Walking on a slope at Flowerdale on a gloomy, overcast, 7-degree-C August day I noticed an inner tube lying on the ground. In the time it took me to move forward to pick it up, I realised that inner tubes don’t have tread or a pretty red stripe underneath. What I was trying to recover was a Red-bellied Black Snake (Pseudechis porphyriacus). It’s a tough snake to be out ‘sunning’ itself in these conditions. Maybe we should name a subspecies to reflect this ………. P.p. flowerdalii or maybe even P.p.king-gee-ii.