Snakes are out on the Gold Coast in full force this mating season

SNAKES! They are everywhere at the moment as development and mating season has them running amok. Here is where the snake hot spots are.

GOLD Coast snake catcher Tony Harrison is heading out to up to eight jobs a day during peak snake season, and some suburbs are worse than others.

Areas such as Pimpama and Pacific Pines are experiencing high rates of snake encounters as displaced snakes lose their homes.

“Obviously cold blooded animals get more active as it gets warmer,” he said.

“The season kicked off in mid-July and we’ve got a long way to go — we did eight on Thursday and some of those involved multiple snakes.

Tony Harrison posted this video to his Facebook page of him capturing a nearly 10ft python from a Labrador backyard.

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“There’s a lot of activity around areas being developed.

“When a snake is living a lovely life under a log somewhere and a bulldozer comes and rips it away, the snake frantically has to find a new home.

“A lot of snakes being displaced are in those areas being rapidly developed.”

Katie Eales of Wild Encounters snake catchers said at this time of year there aren’t necessarily more snakes, they are just more obvious — and very frisky.

“Generally speaking the end of August and beginning of September is the start of breeding season,” she said.

“It gets a bit warm, males are looking for females and females are looking for males.

“We definitely have hot spots around the Coast; down around Currumbin and Tallebudgera we see a lot of carpet pythons and up around Pimpama and Ormeau there are most brown snakes.”

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Local snake catcher Katie Eales of Wild Encounters with Jetson the Carpet Python and Spot the Spotted Python. Picture Mike Batterham

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Mr Harrison and Ms Eales both agreed that experience is vital when it comes to handling snakes, especially venomous ones.

A snake catcher for 26 years, Mr Harrison said he can read the personalities of snakes and pick what their next move will be.

But he says that’s not always the case with emerging snake catchers, which can make it hard to find quality staff.

“In 26 years I’ve only had three blokes I’ve wholeheartedly trusted,” he said.

“I see so many new snake catchers start up, and they’re misidentifying snakes online, they turn up with welding gloves and all these tools and I can see how scared to death they are.

“You can’t be scared in this job, if you’re scared you don’t know what you’re doing and when you’ve got a client that’s scared — you have to be diplomatic.”