Living with Wildlife – Snake handling course

Last week a number of us spent three days learning about snake behaviour and biology and the safest way to catch a snake and relocate it, if need be.

Australian snakes are not as aggressive as most people think, in fact their behaviour is really defensive rather than offensive. The first thing they do is “camouflage” this can be just staying still and merging into the background, or just staying still until you realise (by movement nearby) that you’ve been seen.

These are photos of a death adder in leaf litter and a death adder on the carpet. Hard to believe until you see them in their “natural” surrounds that that pattern could help them hide.

They will hide under tiles, corrugated iron, cardboard, shoes or even their own body. If you stand on them with evenly distributed weight (and not your full weight) providing you don’t hurt them they will just stay where they are. See Gavin standing on snake in box below.

If they realise that camouflage hasn’t worked they then go looking for a hiding place, which could just as easily be under your shoe or up your trouser if you’re standing still because although you might have posed a “threat” while you were moving the snake doesn’t seem to recall this. One of the things we had to do on the first day was stand around in a circle and watch what the snakes actually did. Below is a red bellied black looking for a hiding spot.

it is only when camouflage and hiding has obviously failed that the snake will attempt to flee. Unfortunately they can be quite fixated on the direction in which they want to flee and this can be misinterpreted as the snake chasing you, when really they are just trying to get away, and you may be in the flight path. Or it could be that a plant guard is in the way, in which case they just squeeze through. Check out the diameter of the snake and the size of the mesh in the plant guard below. Small wonder they can squeeze under a household door.

If we had done this course in summer we would have had to move a lot quicker as the temperature of our snakes was between 17 and 23C. Once they get up around 30C they move much much faster. The brown snakes are particularly tricky as when you’re trying to hook them they often do a u-turn and come straight back towards you. The idea is to try and get the hook around them about a quarter or a third of the way down and then as they are still sliding through scoop them up and put them head first into the catch bag. Sounds easy doesn’t it? Not so with the “hotter” snakes. It can take a number of attempts. Once in you then have to make sure they don’t shoot back out, especially if you have the bag up too high and they come out and slide down the catch stick straight towards you :-)

Most of these photos are Andrew’s (yep I borrowed/stole them) the picture on the right is of Jake (left) and Andrew (right) counting scales in order to id a snake in a tube.

If they get tired trying to escape and don’t have the strength to run away anymore that’s when they will try to bite. Several did fake strikes once tired (bluffs) and a couple bit the catch stick when they were really tired and feeling cornered. You can tell the bluff from the real thing because they really pull back before they strike when they mean it. It was a great three days and I thoroughly enjoyed learning more about these beautiful creatures.

If ever I am unfortunate enough to get bitten by a snake I’d rather it was Australian than from North America or Asia. Although Australia might have 19 out of the top 23 most venomous snakes in the world the side effects of snake bite here don’t appear to be as horrific as if you get bitten by a rattlesnake or a viper – I’ll stick with the Aussie snakes thanks.