GOLD COAST BULLETIN (Collengatta, Australia) 24 November 07 Snake charmer (Doug Parrington )
Tony Harrison's most frightening snake story is not about his own close brush with death but about a childcare centre.
He tells how little children -- three and four-year-olds -- innocently coloured in part of the back of a 2m eastern brown snake with felt-tipped pens as it lay on the floor of the Elanora centre's playroom.
The incident happened about 10 years ago, but Harrison, a veteran snake-catcher with thousands of contacts with reptiles on the Gold Coast, rates it as the most memorable.
Harrison says that when he arrived at the centre, childcare workers had cleared the children from the room and the monstrous snake had found refuge under a refrigerator. The eastern brown -- a species rated as the second-most deadly snake in the world -- was caught by Harrison without much difficulty.
But it was when he was hanging the snake up, ready to deposit it in a bag, that he and the staff noticed the black Texta markings on the snake's scales. It was obvious at least one of the children had lain on the floor beside the creature and tried to colour its back.
"The snake probably thought 'ooh, that feels nice' and just lay there," says Harrison.
It takes something out of the ordinary to surprise or shock Harrison these days. He is assured and confident around snakes, but he continues to be amazed at their ability to turn up in the most unexpected places. The master snake handler is on call 24 hours a day to help people whose homes or yards have been invaded by serpents of some sort.
"You name a street on the Gold Coast, I've probably caught a snake there," he says.
It doesn't matter whether it's the middle of Surfers Paradise, the dormitory suburbs or the bush-covered Hinterland, Harrison has become the man to call.
His sphere of operation is bounded by the three Bs -- Brisbane, Banora Point and Beaudesert. But the variety of places where snakes turn up, without invitation, seems to be boundless.
He has removed a venomous red-bellied black snake from the top floor of a prominent Surfers Paradise hotel (no name, discretion assured), an eastern brown from the 13th storey of an apartment building and another brown from the ceiling of the third floor of a building at Robina.
"The explanation for snakes in high rises is that people pack their suitcases at home, maybe in their garages, and the snakes quietly slide into the cases, and then go on holidays to the apartment or hotel rooms," says Harrison.
It seems no place is off limits to reptiles.
"I've captured them in strip joints, restaurants, nightclubs, on beaches, theme parks, in hotel lobbies, luxury apartments and in the weirdest places in homes.
"I've been searching for snakes in people's 'play rooms' -- blow-up dolls, sado-masochist gear, the lot -- and once I even stumbled across someone's . . . er . . . nursery in the basement of their home.
"I often retrieve snakes from people's beds and cupboards. The other favourite place is in people's television cabinets or in the back of their computers, where it is warm.
"I often find them in swimming pools, and occasionally retrieve green tree snakes from goldfish bowls inside houses."
He has known many people to have had close calls, just like the toddlers in the childcare centre.
He once discovered a snake happily sleeping under the pillow of an elderly woman. On another occasion, he found an old man using his walking stick to push what he believed was a python out the door, only to discover it was an eastern brown.
But the behaviour that really made his jaw drop involved a baby, a snake and a nervous mother.
"The mother found the snake curled up beside the baby in the cot. But she didn't remove the baby; she just waited until I arrived. I asked her why she hadn't taken the kid out of the cot, and she said she was too afraid of being bitten, so she just left it there."
Occasionally, Harrison still is amazed by the variety and number of his quarry.
He once was called to remove what was believed to be a couple of carpet snakes from the ceiling of an old building due for demolition at Coomera. By the end of the day, he had found 63 reptile in residence.
His other big score was 17 carpet snakes from a house at Maudsland.
And the largest snake he has caught was a 17.5kg python at Nerang.
Harrison has paid a painful price for his serpentine vocation; his hands bear multiple scars where snake fangs have dug into his flesh. Barely a week goes by without a snake grabbing him.
"I've been bitten thousands of time," he says matter-of-factly.
Most of the bites are from non-venomous snakes such as pythons or mild-venom snakes. They all hurt, but Harrison shrugs off the injuries as part of the job.
"In a lot of situations, there is no other option other than to stick your hand into a confined space and do the best you can. I often say to myself 'don't be such a big girl, just do it', and grab the snake knowing it's probably going to have a chew on my hand.
"It's not that bad. You have to understand, the snake bites because it is its only defence. It sees a big human grabbing at it and it has no option when it is cornered but to strike out."
He remembers one particular bite on his hand, at 11.10am on September 2, 2003. It almost ended his life. The culprit was an eastern brown, a massive 215cm brute he had caught at Sovereign Islands.
The snake was confined in a bag, the opening of which was gathered tightly closed in Harrison's left hand. But the snake pushed its head to the top of the bag, sensed Harrison's hand and bit into his ring finger.
"It was like getting a bindi prick. And as is usual immediately after a snakebite, I felt OK," says Harrison.
But the reason he remembers the exact time was because he knew a precise record of his body's reaction to the bite could be crucial.
He knew he had to act fast. So did the local doctor at Paradise Point, Harrison's wife Jodie, the staff at Gold Coast Hospital and his family and friends, including a couple of other snake experts.
Within a short time he was sitting up in a hospital bed, with these people formed in a semi-circle around him, hoping against hope it had been a 'dry bite' (a bite by which no venom is injected by the snake).
But the hope was misplaced.
After half an hour of waiting, the venom hit him like a train.
One moment he was chatting with his friends, and the next he began to descend into a kind of hell.
His heart rate started to rise rapidly, and he was struck by a severe pain in his bladder.
Then his breathing began to be affected, his lungs not quite able to fill with air. And with each struggling breath came a pain in his head that felt 'like someone hitting me with a baseball bat'.
"I'm going down!" Harrison exclaimed to his friends.
Despite having already been given three phials of antivenene, Harrison succumbed to the poison, lapsed into unconsciousness and was to remain that way for the next three hours as doctors worked frantically to save him.
All together, he was given 10 phials of antivenene, an astonishing amount to be administered to a single patient, to counteract the clotting that was occurring on his brain.
But he recovered fully, and in his words, 'back catching snakes at someone's house at Beenleigh 26 hours after being released from hospital'.
"I'm lucky, I suppose. I have no major after-effects from that bite, although I've been warned to avoid being bitten by another brown at all costs. The body builds up a resistance to antivenene and the chances are I might not survive another bite," he says.
Other snake handlers he knows have not come away unscathed from bites.
"One has developed asthma, another is blind in one eye, and they all suffer aches and pains as a result of the experience."
After a lifetime of catching, handling, keeping and breeding reptiles, Harrison is well attuned to the personality of snakes.
"I've always loved them," he says. "Ever since I was a kid, when I and my brother James used to catch them in the bush around our Sydney home, I've had a passion for them."
His interest in them probably was sparked by his father Bernie, who kept a diamond python in a fish tank at their home in Kellyville.
But any traces of ophidiophobia (fear of snakes) were erased when young Tony caught his first red-bellied black, took it home in a bucket and released it -- without the knowledge of Bernie and mum Christine -- in the household swimming pool which had been drained and made into a natural garden.
The slithering 30cm newcomer was quickly discovered by his parents, who made him release it back into the wild.
"When I was 10, we didn't have payTV, computer games or any other distractions," says Harrison.
"We loved the bush, and inspiration at the time was television naturalist Harry Butler. I started reading lots of books and magazines about wildlife and I suppose I became a child naturalist.
"We used to go out on our bikes and into the bush at nearby Castle Hill. We'd spend ages out there."
By the time Harrison reached high school age, he had gained a reputation as someone who was absolutely fearless around reptiles.
"I regularly used to take a blue-tongue lizard or a water dragon to school in my bag. My mates thought it was pretty cool," he says.
Harrison lived at Kellyville for 28 years, then moved to Queensland in 1993.
He is married to Jodie, who happens to manage the reptile section of a Robina pet shop. They have two daughters, Karlee, 22, and Laurren, 21.
The family has grown to accept, even love, Tony's involvement with snakes.
Harrison's first real experience as a snake advocate was in 1994 when he heard of a huge carpet snake worrying a woman in the front yard of her Runaway Bay house.
When he arrived at her place, he found she already had chopped the snake into several pieces with an axe.
"When I asked her why she had done it, she said she had no option because there were no snake catchers in the district," he says.
"So I started to help a few people, became known in the district and that grew into a hobby. But it was soon apparent there was more to it than a hobby. A lot of people need help with snakes,"
In 1995, armed with public liability insurance, first-aid training, a National Parks and Wildlife Service permit for handling and keeping snakes, he went into the snake-catching business.
"To be properly certified, you need an extensive knowledge of snakes in southeast Queensland. What is venomous and non-venomous, how to handle them, and references from two reputable snake experts, in my case Matt Hingley (curator of life sciences at Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary, and Bill Rooke."
In the early days, Harrison was a boat-builder whose boss accepted he needed time off occasionally to go and catch snakes from the houses of frightened people.
But soon the snake business got a wriggle-on. Within a few years, he was fulfilling the roles of snake-catcher, breeder and seller, and educator.
"I have permits to show at schools, parties, corporate functions, fairs and fetes . . . whenever there is a chance to help people understand snakes, which ones are which, what to do if you come across a snake and the plight of snakes," says Harrison.
"My dream is to become the equivalent of a horse whisperer, only with snakes."
He recently did snake wrangling for the Jodie Foster movie Nim's Island, which recently filmed on the Gold Coast, and also provided snakes for television's Sea Patrol and for the payTV show Animal Planet, starring Austin Stevens.
As well, Big Brother fans would have seen Harrison's snakes during the show's Fright Night.
He eventually wants to work on the set of big movie productions.
In the meantime, his life is fully occupied catching snakes and breeding reptiles in secure enclosures.
He last went on a holiday -- for 48 hours -- five years ago to attend a wedding.
"I can't stand to be away for too long. People and snakes are depending on me," he says.
"I'm on call around the clock. Sometimes I just go from one job to another, and it's not unusual in the busy warmer months to get 100 calls a day. Many of them are calls for help, some are for advice and some are requests to perform shows."
"You nominate the time of day, that's when I get calls. It could be midnight, midday, 3am.
"But I don't always have to go out. Mostly you can just advise people because 99 per cent of the time snakes don't need any attention. If left alone, they will go away, or for example they might move into a rock wall where it's probably impossible to get them anyway."
Harrison often attends to calls from members of the public on his beloved motorbike, a Suzuki Bandit.
Being on the bike allows him to avoid traffic snarls and get to places quickly, before people are bitten or before the snake is killed or injured. All he needs to perform his duty are two pinning sticks, a medical kit, a backpack and his hands.
But consider, for a moment, exactly what this might entail: Harrison goes to a popular beach, moves back the crowd, catches a 2m eastern brown, lowers it into his backpack, puts the pack on his back and sets off through the traffic to his Paradise Point home.
"There have been times when I have done this, and a strap on my backpack wiggles about in the wind and touches me on the ear or the neck as I'm motoring along, and I think: 'Now was that a strap or something else touching my ear?' So far, it's never been a snake," he says with a chuckle.
Harrison says he is not courageous.
"I'm terrified of heights and horses. More people are killed by horses than snakes every year. At least I know where I stand with snakes."
Harrison's goal to be a snake whisperer is surely within reach.
At a recent job at Maudsland, he walked a snake back to his car. At least that is how it appeared to the people who had called for help to get rid of a huge brown snake.
"I didn't have my tools (pinning sticks) in the car and the snake was moving in the direction of the car anyway. So I just ambled along past it, opened a door, got a bag ready and waited for it. The snake, looking to find a safe place away from pesky humans, wriggled inside.
"So I was able to say to the people 'see, I even know how to walk a snake!'
"Of course, it wasn't a trick. The snake was just trying to protect itself."
Harrison breeds all sorts of reptiles. He has 70 snakes, 30 lizards, four tortoises, two crocodiles (one saltwater and one freshwater) and three-dozen reptile eggs in incubators downstairs.
He keeps them in the peak of health for his shows and for breeding.
"I have my porn stars (the breeders) and my show snakes," he says.
"They have their illnesses, just like other creatures.
"They can have heart or kidney failure, and they can get pneumonia -- complete with a little cough -- like humans."
Breeding snakes can be lucrative, says Harrison, but it is an exacting science and it doesn't always work out.
"Some licensed reptile breeders can make between $50,000 and $100,000 a year, maybe more, and there is a high demand for venomous snakes. The snake market in Australia is huge," he says.
"But things can go wrong. I lost $11,000 last year after an incubator failed and when we moved a few months ago the breeding was badly affected. Some years I have bred hundreds of reptiles, but this year there were only 50 babies.
"It's all about knowledge. You might be able to get $7500 for green tree hatchlings and $15,000 for any species of albino snakes, but many other snakes such as carpet snakes can be about $50 each."
Harrison confesses to positively liking reptiles. He even has names for the ones he keeps, such as Fatbottom, Crikey and Sobek (half-man, half-crocodile of ancient Egypt), and sees them not as creatures to be demonised or feared but as a necessary part of the natural world.
"The attitude of 'the only good snake is a dead snake' is pointless. In most situations they can be easily managed by an expert," he says.
Some people are so fearful of snakes their imagination runs away with them.
Harrison tells of call-outs in which radiator hoses, dog poos, dog leads, steering wheel covers, sticks and even a line of caterpillars have been mistaken for snakes.
Whatever happens, it's just a $70 call-out fee.
The Harrison family's connection with snakes goes beyond familiarity. There is genuine affection for the creatures, some of which live for 40 years.
"When a snake we've had for a long time dies, like an old red-bellied black breeder we kept for 11 years, the family really does feel sadness. There's been a tear or two shed on those sorts of occasions."
The Gold Coast is in what Harrison calls the 'turbo' season when snakes mating are slithering up to 500m a day looking for food. They're on the move all over the Coast.
* Harrison's snake-catching service is on 0401 263 296. The simple advice: Until he gets there, leave the snake alone and keep away.
Snake charmer