In the seven years he’s been catching snakes, Drew Godfrey has been bitten on the hands, arms and legs. He even copped a bite to the side of the head once.
But he’d never been bitten on the face until last week, when he had to wrangle two snakes at the same time.
The coastal carpet pythons were tucked away in the roof of a shed on a property in Hervey Bay, Queensland, when Godfrey arrived to catch and relocate the pair.
Perched on a ladder, he reached into the small space where they were curled up hoping to collect them one at a time but the snakes tried to escape into the shed frame.
“They both were going opposite directions [and] I never would have been able to catch them,” Godfrey told 9news.com.au, so he had to be “more hasty than normal”.
“I’d usually use both arms for a big snake like that and keep it comfortable but having two of them, I was sort of catching one with each arm, so they just wouldn’t have felt as comfortable as normal.”
Not wanting to grab either snake by the head and stress them out further, he tucked one animal under each arm and tried to bring them down from the roof gently.
That’s when one of the snakes twisted and bit him on the nose.
His son was recording the catch and caught the moment on camera, along with four very telling words Godfrey uttered seconds after the bite.
“I don’t blame him,” he said of the snake.
Days later, Godfrey stands by that statement.
“If you’re just sitting there asleep and then next minute you’re getting dragged out of bed by an animal that’s much bigger than yourself, you’re going to be pretty scared,” he said.
“Bites are always just done in self-defence so if you don’t annoy them, they won’t bite you. And I got bitten because I was annoying.”
Bites are an occupational hazard for Godfrey, who runs Hervey Bay Snake Catchers and can get up to 10 calls a day to relocate snakes during busy periods, but he doesn’t want everyday Australians to get the wrong idea from the video of this latest bite.
Most snakes don’t want to bite people and aren’t aggressive when left alone, he said.
About 3000 snake bites occur annually in Australia with an average of two fatalities a year.
A 2017 study found that 20 per cent of the 35 people who died due to snake bites between January 2000 to December 2016 were bitten while trying to pick up or kill the snake.
Godfrey added that many non-fatal bites also occur when members of the public try to pick up or catch snakes without appropriate training, or try to kill them.
“People interfere with them and they bite in self-defence,” he said.
“The best thing to do is leave them alone, if they’re harmless … if it is a dangerous snake or you’re not sure what it is, always call a snake catcher.”
He said that there’s no need to fear a snake that’s just minding its own business.
“I’d like to one day not have to do this job, because we’ve all been able to see snakes for what they are, which is just another animal.”
You should never approach or attempt to touch or contain a wild snake, according to Wildlife Information Rescue and Education Service (WIRES), Australia’s largest wildlife rescue organisation.
If a snake is in your home, ensure all people and pets are moved to a different room, try to isolate the snake in the room where you found it by closing the doors, and call WIRES or a local snake catcher.
If a snake is in your yard or an open outdoor space, leave it alone and it should move on.
