PROFESSIONAL snake catcher Barry Goldsmith was at the Portsea pub a few weeks ago when a woman came in looking for a room for the night.
Nothing unusual until it was revealed the middle-aged
woman only lived up the road, but was unwilling to spend the night sharing her home with a 60-centimetre tiger snake.
Mr Goldsmith put on his catching 'hat' and came to her rescue. Next day he had three callouts for snakes _ at BlueScope Steel in Hastings where a worker saw a copperhead snake disappear down a phone cable pit, the hospital at HMAS Cerberus in Crib Point where nurses spotted a baby tiger snake slithering between bricks and later in the afternoon when he was with his family at a Red Hill carnival and captured a copperhead snake.
"It's the unseasonable warm weather," Mr Goldsmith said. "Snakes are out and about earlier this year, and have been active since the hot weather we had in early October."
Mr Goldsmith captures snakes throughout the south-east and Mornington Peninsula. People pay him $150 or more, depending on how tricky the capture. Some catchers charge as much as $400.
Particularly happy to see him was a woman in Moorooduc last Monday who saw a copperhead in her bedroom slithering into her uggboot. This is the snake in our picture, an adult male of about 130centimetres; they can grow to 160centimetres.
The woman lives on the Mornington-Tyabb Road near Flinders Christian College in an area surrounded by grasslands.
Mr Goldsmith said more serpents were being forced into the suburbs and towns due to loss of habitat.
The good rains and early warmth have created plenty of long grass, ideal conditions for snakes to move about.
This spring his roll-call of snake captures includes Portsea, Mt Martha, Mt Eliza, Frankston, Somerville, Langwarrin (including a tiger at a cattery), Seaford, Patterson Lakes (five times this season), Carrum Downs, Chelsea, Mordialloc and Cranbourne (including one in a school classroom).
The Goldsmith family home in Mornington is a halfway house for snakes captured by Mr Goldsmith. By law he has to release them into the wild within five days of capture and the uggboot snake went to a vegetable farm in Somerville soon after our photo was taken.
"I release them into national parks or on Land For Wildlife properties owned by people I know," he said.
People's changing attitude to snakes is reflected in the Somerville property owner's experience; all his life he had killed snakes with a shovel but a few years ago the farmer looked out on his commercial pumpkin patch and saw it seething with rats. His snake-killing sprees had upset the balance of nature.
Now he encourages snakes by letting Mr Goldsmith release captured ones on his property and the rat problem has been solved.
Mr Goldsmith said people not killing snakes has also led to a decline in snake bite incidents.
"It's well known that most snake bites occur when people try and kill them," Mr Goldsmith said.
He tells a gruesome story of what happens when a snake is decapitated: "The snake can live for up to 15 minutes and I've seen their eyes follow the assailant and in one instance watch as its body was taken away."
To contact Barry Goldsmith, call 0408 067 062.
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