From page one of ‘Carpentaria’ by Alexis Wright, Pub. Giramondo, 2006:
“The ancient serpent, a creature larger than storm clouds, came down from the stars, laden with its own creative enormity. It moved graciously – if you had been watching with eyes of a bird hovering in the sky far above the ground. Looking down at the serpent’s wet body, glistening from the ancient sunlight, long before man was a creature who could contemplate the next moment in time. It came down those billions of years ago, to crawl on its heavy belly, all around the wet clay soils in the Gulf of Carpentaria.”
A neighbour used to keep carpet snakes. When I said, in his kitchen, over a cup of tea, that I was looking for a snake skin to make an animation, he ran up to his attic and brought down a box of them. “Choose one”, he said.