‘Some people shouldn’t be doing it’: Inside the crazy lives of snake catching veterans
The snake catching business is booming in Queensland as suburban sprawl sends animals slithering to new homes. But are new operators doing more harm than good?
The footage begins in the cab of Tony and Brooke Harrison’s Nissan SUV which, for reasons that soon become clear, has been fitted with the personalised plates ‘5NAKE’.
“We got this urgent call – don’t know what it is, but it’s in a bedroom,” Tony tells the camera.
Brooke quips, out of frame: “There’s usually eastern browns here.”
Tony: “I’ve seen red bellies. You can do this one.”
Brooke: “Righto.”
Her movements over the next 12 minutes are fairly unremarkable, but it’s still pretty tense.
A nervous Pimpama family – and 90,000 Facebook followers – watch as Brooke methodically disassembles a child’s room, looking for something that shouldn’t be there.
She goes through toys, clothes, blankets and a doll house when, suddenly, she zips out of frame.
A quick rattling and then the sound of triumph.
“Ah! There you are.”
She reappears, holding a little noodle of a thing.
It’s a good result – a tree snake – one of the non-venomous varieties that frequent Queensland’s south-east corner.
“He was in the bookshelf,” Brooke tells her viewers.
“Maybe he likes to read.”
‘How cool is this’
The video uploaded to the Harrison Snake Catchers page is not really an adrenaline surge, or even as confronting of some of the pair’s other posts, like the time Tony found a carpet python that died after trying to eat a possum.
But it‘s clear from the comments that Brooke’s tree snake footage is a hit.
Inadvertently, the popularity of such videos is also likely why an increasing number of people in Queensland are taking up snake wrangling themselves.
A rudimentary search of social media reveals dozens of snake-catching operators in Queensland, ranging from one-man wranglers running a side hustle to professionally branded outfits staffed by multiple catchers in matching uniforms.
Footage uploaded to social media by various businesses ranges from the informative to dramatic, with titles such as ‘Surprise in the drawer!’ or ‘Big THICK Carpet Python Gets Hit By Car And Somehow Survives!’, or ‘Just another Day in Queensland!’
The Harrisons are one of the more prominent businesses operating around the Gold Coast, Brisbane and Sunshine Coast regions who offer snake removal services for a fee.
Tony says the videos he makes with Brooke have been a great way for people to learn about reptiles, but they also triggered a growing number of people to realise it is possible to catch snakes for a living.
“They say ‘how cool is this?’ But they’re only seeing the glamorous side,” Tony says.
“If anyone watches our page today they see that I’ve caught nine snakes and they sit there and think ‘well he’s charging $110 a call, that’s more than $900 a day’.
“But then they don’t realise I have had calls to 3am in the morning, for the third day in a row.
“It‘s not all rainbows and butterflies like people think.”
If you go back 30 years, snake catching was probably more of a hobby for most, and usually done for free.
Tony, for example, says he started as his neighbourhood’s “go-to snake guy” and built from there.
The gradual professionalisation of the field – hastened by various insurance and small business overheads – now means snake catching is now treated as a genuine trade that requires training and certification.
While the Queensland Department of Environment and Science is responsible for issuing the Damage Mitigation Permits needed to catch and relocate certain animals, the type of animal covered under the permit is not separated among the data.
This means that despite an apparent surge in snake catcher numbers over recent years, it‘s actually quite hard to say how many there are in the state, as they are mixed in with those who relocate animals such as turkeys and possums.
Tony says the influence of social media on the snake catching industry has been marked, but may not necessarily result in an exponential increase of operators.
“Everyone tries every single year, because of social media, it‘s probably 10 people a year and they have a good hard crack at it.
“And then you see them fade away like a snowflake in the summer heat.”
‘Top Gun stuff’
It might be hard to quantify the exact level of demand for snake catchers in south-east Queensland but some – like Sunshine Coast Snake Catchers owner Stuart Mackenzie – says a booming population and surge in building activity will continue to drive a great need.
Stuart says Queensland’s accelerating post-Covid urban sprawl and the likelihood of more infrastructure projects in the lead up to the 2032 Brisbane Olympics means there will be less and less space for snakes to live, and hence more and more sightings.
“People building houses just can’t keep up with demand, so the snakes unfortunately can‘t keep up either,” Stuart says.
“They’ve got no choice but to go into people‘s yards.”
If you feel like you’ve seen Stuart’s face before, chances are you probably have.
He’s one of the stars of the National Geographic reality program Aussie Snake Wranglers that aired back over spring, while he features in various Sunshine Coast Snake Catchers videos, and covers a fair bit of ground in the field.
He says he caught his first wild snake – a standard carpet python – near his home in Buderim.
“I just remember getting a rush, like the kind of rush I get now from catching a really defensive brown snake,” he says.
“I admit that I was doing it as a hobby then, and the rush doesn’t come every time now. It’s like when you pat a crocodile for the first time at the zoo, it’s unbelievable at first.”
Stuart says the gradual increase in the snake catcher community has been good for competition, but it could also be a hazard considering how simple it is for someone to get a licence.
The aforementioned permits merely require a first-aid certificate, recommendations from fellow snake handlers, or completion of an equivalent snake handling course, as well as any other business and insurance requirements if you want to make money off it.
Stuart on the other hand had a zoology degree and several years under his belt working with reptiles at Australia Zoo before he started snake catching on the side, eventually going full-time about three years ago.
“To be honest, like in terms of other trades, it is a little dangerous because of how easy it potentially is for someone to become a side catcher with basically no experience,” he says.
“When I first started I didn‘t have that much experience but it worked for me in the long run. You still need people to sign off (on your paperwork).
“And I personally, you know, I‘ve been references for a fair few people but I only sign the paperwork if I’m confident enough they can go wrangle an eastern brown snake or whatever.”
Tony has been in the snake catching business for more than three decades.
He’s been bitten numerous times by numerous species (including a goanna) and began catching snakes long before any kind of professional veneer was evident in this particular line of work.
While he is supportive of those who have a passion for snakes – and encourages those who are committed enough to take it seriously – he remains skeptical of the modern pathways to qualification.
“Mother Nature says that Australia has a shitload of snakes,” he says.
“And thank goodness because in the old days, the only good snake was a dead snake and they got killed most of the time unnecessarily. And when humans are in the public trying to do that, that‘s when they get bitten.
“I do hope in the future, the authorities do change the legislation about how they let people become snake catchers … so that some bloke who‘s on his second carton of piss can’t get this brain waving and hey, let’s become a snake catcher.
“It takes years and years and years and years of experience to build up that level before you go in on the Top Gun stuff. You know, people think it‘s easy. It’s not.”
‘There are a couple of cartons in that one alone’
Tony, who has also authored a book called Snake Catcher: True Stories and Reptile Facts, says no two days in the job are the same.
Sometimes, his work involves wrangling customers as well as the animals.
“I can sit here for hours and talk to you about jobs … sex-related, drug-related …
“And then the next subject is what we call vegetarian jobs. The people are not vegetarians, but they are definitely off their chops.
“You can get a call out to someone on really bad drugs and it’s just them staring at their thongs saying ‘get the snake away from me! get the snake away from me!’
“There are a couple of cartons worth of stories in that alone.”
Tony says many people mistakenly think the job is as simple as picking up a snake and putting it in a bag.
“You’ve got to listen to what the customer says on the phone. Look at what the weather is. Listen to the suburb of where they are. What the snake has been doing,” he says.
“You need to be able to read the personality of a snake so when you approach it, you know what you‘re in for. Whether she’s sitting on eggs.
“There are a lot of things you’ve got to know and you can‘t learn it overnight.
“I go on and on and on about these new guys who get permits … and then they do wrong by the snake and wrong by the customer and give them wrong information.”
“Some people shouldn’t be doing it. Some of them do it for the ego and that really can cause dramas.”
Both Tony and Stuart say October through to March is usually the busiest period for snake catchers as the animals come out to sun themselves.
Among the non-venomous varieties in the south-east Queensland region are carpet pythons, common tree snakes, and keelback snakes.
The venomous varieties include whip snakes, eastern brown snakes, red-bellied black snakes, and brown tree snakes.
One of Stuart’s more memorable recent jobs was crawling under a house at Kureelpa in search of a giant brown snake.
“I obviously couldn’t stand up under there and there was only one way in and one way out,” he says.
“It was there sitting up like three feet off the ground. It was over six foot by far one of the biggest brown snakes I’ve ever seen.
“I had to crawl around and basically tickling him with this long stick to move him around. “And then he just sort of sat there and just didn‘t want to move. I was trapped under there for a while because he was blocking my way out.”
Stuart said he can get upwards of 30 phone calls in a day (though this varies) and he charges $120 for a callout (“plus an extra $10 or $20 if it’s a particularly tricky job”).
“One time, it was about 1am and I was at a freestanding oven in someone’s kitchen,” he says
“Taking the oven apart, it was only when we pulled the side casing of the oven off and in between the hot inner section and the outer casing was an eight foot carpet python.
“We literally catch them anywhere. You can walk around your house, and literally look anywhere we’ve caught a snake there. Anywhere you can think of.
“Under fridges, under beds, inside light fittings, just everywhere. Under pillows.”
For all the excitement he does, however, have a word of warning for anyone thinking of getting involved in the industry.
“It‘s one of those things that is literally 24/7 commitment. It is not this nine to five, you don’t have your dinner and just forget about it,” he says.
“You get no sleep. You have to be available at the drop of a hat.
“It‘s relatively easy to get the permit. But in terms of actually lasting and trying to make it a full time job these days with the outside comes around, it’s near impossible.
“That‘s why a lot of snake catchers come and go. They give it a go and then sort of just can’t keep going just because of how much is involved.”
Tony, too, can attest to the unique stressors of this line of work.
“I know so many guys have so, so much experience, they could easily be a fantastic snake catcher,” he says.
“But they don‘t want the drama that goes with it, the stuff that ruins your birthday, ruins your Christmas.
“You go out with the missus, as soon as you order your dinner: ‘ring ring sorry, can we cancel that order?’ You actually lose your life believe it or not, you have to be married to the job if you want it to work.”
Funny he says that.
Tony happens to work alongside his partner and kindred spirit Brooke.
The pair have been together for nine years now and often share snake catching duties with weekend snake handling shows over the cooler months.
“It’s very hard to survive on snake-catching alone,” Tony says.
“And you cannot survive on snake shows alone.”
‘The public have got it, they’ve learned’
Stuart says he does not know where the snake catching industry will be in 10 years, or what a future permit system could look like.
“Whether it is done by stricter rules about who to get permits, and that sort of thing or whether it‘ll get easier and easier, I’m not sure,” he says.
“But in the end, you know, like the dedication and what‘s required to actually be a 24/7 snake catcher kind separates the good from the casual ones, you know?”
“It‘s kind of its own little way of filtering out the businesses that are there for the right reasons, obviously, to protect the animals but also there to offer a professional service.”
Tony says at the very least, people are now more conscious of snakes, and keen to learn more about them.
“In the early days when I first started with Facebook people would say ‘hey, I‘ve got a snake in my backyard’ and it was 200 comments about killing it and burning the house down.
“Now It’ll be 50 Comments, 48 of them positive … saying leave it alone, (this species) does this and this.
“I don’t have to say shit now, the public have got it, they’ve learned.”
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