There’s a place in Australia where they keep the most venomous snakes in the world. Someone’s job is to milk that venom, daily: you just sort of cock the head of the snake over a cup with cling film on it, the fangs pierce the plastic and the snake does the rest. It must be the piercing that triggers the reflex; isn’t life clever, which is what I thought when he told me. He also told me about wanting to get a tank for some pet rats and finding one for sale online, and when he went to collect it he entered the house and was led to a room which had some kind of file cabinet arrangement that ran from floor to ceiling along one wall, clear plastic, and every drawer was filled with snakes. The guy bred mice for the snakes, and they kept escaping. Isn’t life clever, I thought again, completely missing the point of this story, like I tend to do with most of them.

All I really wanted to know was did the room smell, and of what.