I was very disconcerted to go out for a couple of hours during the day and return to find a shed snake skin in my carport which hadn’t been there earlier. A pretty bold fellow to be wandering about in the open during the morning. I picked the skin up to see if I could identify what snake type it was but as it is very translucent it’s hard to tell. It’s about a metre long and the width of my index finger at the head end (not the biggest I’ve ever collected – that was a 2.6 metre diamond python skin).
I’ve photographed it because the pattern is quite interesting, sort of hexagonal but also directional, a bit like chain stitch rows if I were to think in textiles.
In this next photo the split in the very outer layer can be seen revealing that, although it feels paper-thin, there are actually a couple of layers to it.
It was obviously a day for Australian animals to visit my property. I checked my orange tree for bugs, found a couple, and went to get the ladder. In my outdoor shed I saw a leaf tailed gecko hiding in the dark on the wall. What a beauty. Below I’ve put my photo first and two others I found on the internet. Each one is so different. What a coincidence seeing as I’ve been drawing my own versions of geckos recently.
Images from: pixdaus.com and aussiepythons.com/forum/australian-lizards-5383/id-leaf-tail-gecko-please-143638/
TactualTextiles 
What fantastic creatures for inspiration; though I have to say Australian wildlife can be pretty scary! Here in England everything is very mild mannered, and when I lived in Canada the scary ones were easy to see – bears and cougars – but bugs and snakes are a different kettle of fish altogether!
Yes, snakes aren’t my favourite, especially as I have three dogs.
Not back in Sydney, but catching up on my world in the evenings here. We tried describing geckos to Karinas host family while we were in Nantes for the day today – didn’t know the French word. Haven’t done any drawing lots of looking though.