BUSSELTON DUNSBOROUGH MAIL (Australia) 03 September 08 Wrangler prepared for snakes (Rosanna Dalibor)
Crikey, it’s that time of year again!
With the warmth of the spring sun, September is when most snakes wake up from their long winter sleep – and put fear into people who come across them.
Roger Jackson, owner of the Naturaliste Reptile Park in Carbunup, knows all about it.
He is a volunteer snake remover and gets about 10-15 snake alert calls a day during snake season.
So far he’s only had a few calls from people who have seen a snake on their property, but based on his experience, the calls will be more frequent as it gets warmer.
So what does he do with an unwelcome snake? He relocates it well away from human habitation.
According to Roger, most people are scared of snakes because they don’t know much about them and have been told from an early age to beware of snakes.
And which snakes should people actually watch out for?
The dugites and tiger snakes, because both are highly venomous and common in the Busselton shire area because of the low-lying wetlands.
Roger said it was a common misconception that tiger snakes and dugites were aggressive and could ‘chase’ you, especially during spring’s mating season, when in fact they perceived humans as large moving objects – predators – and were more scared of you than you were of them.
“Just because the snake is travelling towards you doesn’t mean it is attacking you,” Roger said.
He warned that in 90 per cent of the cases where people did get bitten by a snake they had been trying to kill it or catch it themselves.
“If you see a snake and you live on a rural property, just leave it alone and you‘ll probably never see it again,” he said.
“You leave them alone, they’ll leave you alone.
“99 per cent of the time, people’s perception of a how much risk the snake poses to them is completely wrong.
“The only real problem is when you get snakes in people’s backyards in suburbia and there are kids around.
“About 2000-3000 people get bitten every year, and out of that about only 2-3 need an anti-venom while maybe one person dies annually in Australia.
“You need to be really, really unlucky to get bitten by a snake.”
However, Roger said that if you saw a snake on your property and you were concerned you should call the shire ranger, Department of Environment and Conservation or the police and they would get someone – like Roger – to come out and remove it.
Killing a snake is illegal, except in certain circumstances where the snake is a direct threat to you.
Wrangler prepared for snakes