One snake catcher alone has been called out to catch between 15 and 20 snakes in the past two to three weeks in the Echuca, Rushworth and Shepparton areas.
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While the snake-sighting season had an unusually late start this year, snake catcher Tania Corby said it had more than made up for it since then.
“It’s been flat stick,” Ms Corby said of her work in recent weeks.
“It went from nothing to everything.”
Ms Corby put down the slow start to the season to the fact the winter and spring had been longer than usual this year, with the warmer weather not arriving until later than normal.
She said this year she had seen tiger snakes, browns and red-bellied black snakes among her catches in an area that covers Echuca to Euroa, Nagambie to Nathalia, and everything in between.
On a Saturday recently, she had four call-outs.
Among the more unusual calls was to remove a brown snake from a kitchen in Stanhope, as well as moving another brown snake from inside a light pole at netball courts in Echuca.
The snake at Echuca was the biggest Ms Corby has seen this season, and had been seen at the courts before youngsters were due to arrive to use them.
That job involved removing an access panel to the big light pole, and then gently prodding the snake with a stick to get it to move out of the wiring area.
Ms Corby also had to get a red-bellied black snake out of a can after its head had become stuck near Rushworth.
“If nobody found that it would have perished,” she said.
As it was, the snake was okay and was able to be released back into the bush.
Ms Corby said she had had a “mixed bag” of snakes this year because there had been a lot of spring rains.
“When it’s dry, you get mainly brown snakes,” she said.
“Tigers and red-bellied blacks are a marshy snake.
“You see tigers more around channels and water.”
Ms Corby said if people came across a snake in their backyard, they should not panic.
Her advice is that if the snake is within about a metre away, people should stand still.
“If it hasn’t taken off, freeze and become part of the environment. A snake is not scared of trees or a bush,” she said.
“Let it perceive you as an inanimate object.”
Once it is about six metres away, you can then safely walk backwards and go and call for help, she said.
Ms Corby said, however, that it was important to always leave a snake a path to exit.
When people were out walking in bush areas at this time of year, Ms Corby suggested they made sure they kept an eye out in front of them for snakes.
“If you are watching in front, you will see a snake before you get to it,” she said.
“Prevention is better than cure.”
If a snake is still and is sunning itself, Ms Corby said people should walk around it.
However, if it is moving across a path, they should stop and let it go, making sure it had a clear exit, she said.
“You don’t need to be afraid of a snake,” she said.
“It’s not an aggressor. It’s a coward. The only time a snake will defend itself is if you back it into a corner.”
She warned snakes could be anywhere around bush or water, properties that back onto empty lots, vacant paddocks, or orchards.
Ms Corby also warned that snakes were generally spotted in the cooler parts of the day - in the evenings, around 6pm or 7pm, and also in the mornings around 7am.
They were not on the move in the middle of the day as it was too hot for them, she said.
Another misconception Ms Corby said a lot of people had about snakes was if they saw a baby snake, that there would be parents nearby.
This was simply not true, Ms Corby said.
“Browns don’t see their babies. They lay eggs and are gone,” she said.
“Tigers lay in sacks and they leave before they come out.”