Risky business Down Under
Snake-removal specialists in Australia’s Queensland busy as reptile encounters increase
SUNSHINE COAST, Australia — The phone rings. It’s the local prison. There’s a snake in a cell. Within a few hours, snakes have also been spotted at a school, beneath a piano stored in a private garage and near a lagoonlike swimming pool at a retirement home. Customers want them gone.
Business has never been so good for Stuart McKenzie, who runs a snake-catching service on the Sunshine Coast, a verdant enclave along miles of pristine beach in the vast state of Queensland. On the busiest days, he can receive more than 35 calls about troublesome snakes.
Queensland is home to the largest number of snake species in Australia — about 120. Of those, two-thirds are medically venomous and a handful are deadly. Throughout Australia, fatalities from snake bites remain extremely rare — about two a year — and in Queensland, the reptiles are simply a part of life.
In the cooler months of the year — historically from April to September — snakes become sluggish and may not eat, drink, defecate or even move for weeks at a time. But as the world warms and the climate in southern Queensland shifts from subtropical to tropical, this period of brumation is shrinking — meaning more run-ins between humans and the animals.
“Not only are snakes becoming more active earlier in the year and staying active longer in the year, but it also means that they’re going to stay active longer into the night,” said Bryan Fry, a professor of biology at the University of Queensland. On nights with temperatures above about 82 degrees, he said, snakes will remain active all night long.
McKenzie, 35, of Sunshine Coast Snake Catchers 24/7, says his winter break is getting shorter and shorter.
On one recent job, a 4-foot brown snake — the world’s second-most venomous snake species, despite the understated name — was wedged between a fly screen and a window, and needed to be taken out. More straightforward was a request to remove a nonvenomous carpet python, its body intricately patterned with whorls and swirls, coiled in the depths of a shed. (Snake removal fees start at 154 Australian dollars, or around $100.)
Snake catchers travel light. On a typical job, they may carry little more than a metal hook, used to gently prod a snake out from under furniture or push it into place, and a large cotton bag into which snakes are relocated. In every job, the aim is to harm or disrupt the snake as little as possible — and then to bring it somewhere it is less likely to run into trouble.
With the population of the Sunshine Coast projected to increase more than 50% to about half a million people in the 25 years to 2041, deforestation is happening at speed. More housing is being built, and many snakes that once dwelt in native bushland are finding sanctuary — and a reliable source of food and water — in homes intended for humans.
Most run-ins are without incident. But fear and misinformation still proliferate, McKenzie said, as well as lingering perceptions among older generations of Australians that “the only good snake is a dead snake.”
Like kangaroos, koalas and other Australian wildlife, snakes are protected under law, and they play a critical role in the ecosystem by keeping pests at bay.