More of that occasion in a moment but first the thought that if this snake is reading the Canberra Times every day (a habit we like to encourage in all Canberrans) it will have read, in last Friday's Gang-gang column, the story of the famous photograph of the flag-wrapped Marie Celeste.

We hope that young Marie Celeste doesn't think this columnist is stalking her but, having published the famous photograph of her and a story about her in last Friday's column, on Monday we went to see her (she was life-sized this time) at the National Archives of Australia.

To recap, Marie Celeste, is the flag-encased damsel in the evocative photograph Young Australia, taken in 1921. The photograph was taken by her father, the professional photographer Albert Bellier de Villentroy (in the early 1920s he had a studio in Sydney's Hunter Street). The great photograph fell into the caring curatorial clutches of the National Archives because he applied to the federal government for copyright protection of the image.

On Monday and as one of the archives' open day activities for Canberra Family and Community Day visitors were invited to pose for selfies with Marie Celeste, wrapping themselves in provided flags.

Selfie-taking traffic was a little sluggish while we were at the archives on Monday morning but that may be because inexplicably mass-popular Floriade, where Marie Celeste herself had starred the previous day, has the effect of vacuuming up all of the madding throngs for itself. When Floriade is at full throttle everywhere else in town can seem really rather vacant.

But Rhonda King, the archives' visitor and education program officer, said that life-sized Marie Celeste had been a "very popular" attraction at teeming, madding Floriade.

"We invited members of the public to come and wrap themselves up in the flag like Marie Celeste did and it was really interesting [showing me on her device a gallery of pictures of colourful revellers revelling in Marie's black and white company] to see the kinds of people that wanted to get involved. Some people were so excited to get dressed up."

"We're doing this kind of thing [like taking Marie Celeste to Floriade] because we're just trying to encourage people to come and look at the archives from a different point of view because there's a perception of our being as a bit dusty and old and covered in cobwebs."

Ms King cordially invited this columnist to get wrapped up in a flag and be photographed with Marie Celeste. I mumbled several excuses but, unusual for a journalist, every word was a lie.

The real reason was that, already worried that Marie Celeste might imagine I was a sleazy old creep (for I am 69, an age at which my sex is often suspected of deep sleaze) and was stalking her, for me to cuddle up to her in a flag would confirm her worst suspicions. What was more, I was already mortified by the way in which my Friday story had hinted that there was something "lubricious" about her photograph (for there is a suggestion she is naked beneath the flag and is being a bit of a siren). But it had emerged, after my story was published, that Marie Celeste was younger than the archives and this reporter had imagined. From the archives' perusal of her rather mysterious family's few papers she turns out to have been only 14 when the picture was made, leaving me feeling sleazy for having suggested that Young Australia is a portrait of a temptress.

When no one was looking on Monday I whispered her a heartfelt "Sorry". But not a flicker of any new, forgiving emotion crossed her lovely young face.

But back now, fearing she will go believing I'm a snake-in-the-grass, to our aforementioned snake item.

Yes, there's not usually anything venomous about the Sunday Canberra Times (although some of the letters to the editor can be very spiteful), but on Sunday this Eastern Brown Snake was photographed browsing through the paper.

A reader captured this event somewhere (he asks for anonymity and vagueness) at his home on the fringes of Belconnen, near Holt.

Not all of Canberra's snakes will show this keen interest in keeping abreast of current affairs but the picture is a timely reminder that with the warmer weather the ACT's snakes, with every species venomous to some degree, are now slithering out and about.

They will occur in some gardens, and even this columnist's garden in utterly suburban Garran has a history of being cat-fatally serpentine. So look after your toddlers and dogs and cats by keeping your gardens uncluttered and your grass snake-inhospitably short and tidy.

Remember the experts' advice that you should never, ever try to kill a snake you meet. It is not only that they are protected by green and enlightened laws but also that because when menaced some snakes (and especially Eastern Brown Snakes) can retaliate with the lightning speed of a Liberal leadership coup.

The wisdom is that, unlike the experience Eve had with the stay-at-home serpent in the Garden of Eden, a snake in your garden is bound to be wending its way to somewhere else in search of food and of emotional fulfillment with a similarly sinuous soul mate. Leave it alone and in an hour it will almost certainly have tangoed off your premises.