Doug Freyburger wrote:
Farm1 wrote:

It'd be nice to live where there were no venomous snakes but I live
in an area where we have highly venomous elapids. That is just a
fact of life. Keep the eyes peeled and wear long pants and boots and
that is about the best I can do if I want to keep enjoying my
surrounds.

Move far enough north of the snow line and there are no vemonous
snakes and few enough of the other sorts. You pick your situation
and you pay your price.

I assume that by 'north or south' you mean on the snowy side of the snow
line in your hemisphere. This has a number of problems. The most obvious
is that the choice of what to grow is much reduced the colder your climate
is. This group is about edible gardening!

The particular problem in Fran's case is there is very little (soon to be
none) permanent snow in the Australian alps and very few people live there,
much of it is national park. Being a pasturalist in those conditions (as I
understand it she makes here living from cattle) is more difficult even if
there was land available due to the shorter growing season.

So this isn't a practical option.

The interesting thing about the profusion of dangerous snakes in Oz is that
there are so few fatalities, this is partly because most people who live in
rural areas know how to behave with snakes and also the availability of
treatment. A third reason is that despite this image of the suntanned race
of the vast outback Australians are a very urban group, very few actually
live where there are many snakes. Contrast this with Sri Lanka which is the
snakebite capital of the world. There they have a lot of people and a lot
of snakes and they live in each other's pockets.

D