Snake catcher Drew Godfrey warns of dangerous new trend in Wide Bay| VIDEO

A Queensland reptile wrangler says a scary new trend is putting lives at risk after recent floods extended the traditional ‘snake season’. VIDEO.

A Fraser Coast snake catcher is warning Wide Bay residents to stay well clear of the reptiles and not try to handle them, saying doing so could get people killed.

Hervey Bay Snake Catchers owner Drew Godfrey made his plea after encountering a growing number of people in the past few weeks who were taking it upon themselves to trap the snakes.

This was despite some of those reptile being extremely deadly.

“It’s only a matter of time,” Mr Godfrey warned, after posting a video wrangling an eastern brown snake, the second deadliest snake in the world, in a front yard.

He had encountered two instances in the past week: one where someone had put a bucket over the snake and another where it was stuffed inside a pillowcase.

His warning comes on the heels of the February flood events which wreaked havoc across the Wide Bay, South East Queensland, and northern New South Wales.

Experts have warned the floods have driven wildlife from their usual holes and a large number of rodents, a snake’s favourite prey, into homes and backyards.

Drew Godfrey said in the past week he had encountered one person who trapped one snake in a bucket and another who had stuffed a snake into a pillowcase.

The Australian Reptile Park had also issued an urgent warning after an increase in funnel-web spider sightings in flood affected areas, and at the start of March Brisbane-based snake catcher Tony Harrison too to Facebook to call for people to look in the weeks after the disaster out for red-bellied black snakes or eastern browns displaced by the floodwaters.

Mr Godfrey said the changing climate was another reason snakes were still making regular appearances across the Wide Bay long after summer.

In each of the five years he had been catching the reptiles “snake season” had been getting “hotter and longer”.

“They’re active for a far longer period of the year,” Mr Godfrey said.

He had simple advice for anyone who encountered a snake in their yard or on a bush walk: “stand perfectly still”.

This was admittedly “easier said than done” but “snakes are perfectly harmless if you leave them alone.”

Eastern brown snakes are the second deadliest snakes in the world.

Fatality statistics backed him up, he said.

Mr Godfrey said at least 50 per cent of snake bite deaths happened when people tried to pick the reptiles up themselves.

“If they just left it alone they’d be fine,” he said.

The remainder of the deaths came from people not taking snakes and the dangers they can pose seriously.

Examples of he had heard about around the world included a man who was bitten by a venomous snake in his office.

Instead of going to hospital, Mr Godfrey said, the man invited a friend over for a beer.

“Young people of today are a lot more blasé,” Mr Godfrey said.

“When we were growing up there was Steve Irwin, and it was left to the professionals.”

It coincided with a “big boom” in people keeping snakes as pets and “holding pet venomous snakes in ridiculously dangerous ways”.

He had noticed a growing trend of people posing with snakes on social media too.

The smaller snakes were often faster and could easily reach a person’s hand.

“People seem to assume that if it’s little, it’s not dangerous,” Mr Godfrey said.