Snake catchers busier than ever with snakes are on the move due to wild weather
Snakes are showing up in weird and wacky places due to the wild weather, snake catchers warn. A Logan woman found that out when a snake wanted to visit the loo.
QLD News
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Recent rain has been keeping snake catchers busy with reptiles of all sizes slithering into homes, sheds, fridges and even motorbikes for cover in the past few weeks.
A Logan woman got such a fright when she discovered a 2m carpet python inside her two-storey house that she ran outside and locked the door until snake catcher Glenn “Ozzie” Lawrence arrived about 1.30pm on January 29.
Mr Lawrence, 43, of Logan’s OzCapture Snake Relocations had just finished removing a deadly eastern brown hatchling from under a refrigerator in Park Ridge when he received a call from the distressed woman on Charmley Court in Shailer Park.
“She had seen it on a staircase that leads upstairs, that’s when she bolted out of the house in a state of panic and called me,” he said.
By the time Mr Lawrence arrived, the large coastal carpet python had found its way to the toilet.
“Thanking the powers that be it wasn’t actually in the toilet itself,” he wrote under photos of the python on the OzCapture Snake Relocations Facebook page.
Mr Lawrence told the Courier Mail snakes in toilets received a lot of attention.
“Pythons in the dunny get more attention when a snake catcher encounters one, it seems to be the Aussie thing,” he said.
“That’s where we’re most vulnerable. You go there to do a number one or two, and the running joke is, … if you see a snake you’ll do a number two before you sit down,” he said.
Followers of the Facebook page agreed with the sentiments.
“My pet fear at night,” Beverley Thorpe wrote under the photo of the snake next to the toilet.
Rebecca Ramsey joked the python just needed to use the loo, while Stacey Lawson pointed out it was another good reason for men to be courteous.
“That’s why you always put the lid down!” she wrote.
Mr Lawrence said weather had stirred up the ectothermic, or cold-blooded, reptiles.
“The weather has them stirred up. When you have excess rain either just before or just after a good downpour or storm, the phone goes crazy,” he said.
“The usual places they could attract prey are washed away, so, pythons especially try to seek shelter more than normal when there is a lot of rain around.
“Many will come into homes and go up into the roof of a pergola, or get inside a house or underneath concrete slabs, in the case of Eastern browns.”
In recent weeks, Mr Lawrence has also relocated a coastal carpet python from a Rochedale family’s garage and even from the top of a curtain rod from a Forest Lake home.
He has also relocated several non-venomous common tree snakes that have been found under bedside drawers in Park Ridge, behind a fridge in Rochedale South and even from a Hayabusa motorcycle a man was repairing for a client in Greenbank.
“After carefully removing several parts and fenders, we were able to locate the snake and the customers were beyond stoked to learn it was just a harmless, and yes beautiful, common tree snake,” he wrote on Facebook.
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