Snakes & Birds… Don’t mix

As much as I love living where I am surrounded by natural, sub-tropical wet forest that includes remnant patches of Piccabeen Palm groves and a meandering creek, the downside is that it’s also prime habitat for those legless things that have a tendency towards adding birds to their daily cuisine menu. I’ve encountered five different species here since we built our house – not bad. Over the past 6 years we have averaged two to three snake removals per year from on, in or around our bird aviaries. I recently remarked to someone that this year had been a good year – no snakes! As the words left my mouth I looked around for that proverbial bit of `wood’ to touch as I knew the season had a ways to go – particularly given that February to April are the wettest months here, and that’s the perfect time for close encounters of the slithery kind. You see, Carpet Pythons in particular are a little like us – complete sooks when it comes to getting drenched. Inclement weather sets in, and they start looking around for somewhere cosy, warm, and dry! Problem is, if you’re a birdkeeper – such criteria for a welcome escape from the elements is often perfectly filled by our backyard aviaries. In the past week, with the deluges hovering around South-east Queensland, I had to perform three python removals in a single week. Whilst that in itself isn’t exactly `blog worthy’ here's what is…

The first snake was relocated on Thursday morning after being extracted from the aviary roof the previous evening (he spent the night happily chilling inside a pillow case – my wife doesn’t know yet). On Friday morning, my usual feed rounds were interrupted by yet again, another carpet python peering back at me, at eye level mind you, about 30cm away from my face and in exactly the same spot where the first one was removed from only 24 hours prior. I had read about carpet pythons moving in on the territory of others that had been relocated but within the same day?!? So, we moved him to a completely different side of Noosa and hoped that the serpentine adventures were over. Twas’ not to be! That same night we were alerted to something not quite right in the `zoo’ by the sound of a very agitated (and bald) African Grey – Cheeky. Poor old Cheek was letting out the most god-awful wail whilst trying valiantly to fight off yet another carpet python trying to get into his enclosure (and thankfully failing). Upon capture, it was obvious to me that this was the original snake that had been relocated less than 36 hours before and had managed to travel over 10 kms in that time to be found perched (or coiled as it was) in exactly the same spot that I obviously had the audacity to remove him from originally. Not bad for something that doesn’t even have legs. I had heard about snakes traveling distances of 2 to 3 kms to return to a spot they had been removed from but 10 k’s??? It’s not like it’s a direct corridor from where he was placed either – it’s heavily fragmented, mixed suburban and semi-rural habitat that includes a train line splitting the area we dropped him off in and our home area. Dang!

Anyway, lessons to be learned here – when you relocate snakes, make sure you really relocate them – ie. As damn far away as you can drive and preferably with a major water barrier between their new home and yours. Below are two pics of two different snakes we caught last season (I didn’t bother to photograph the recent pair – I was too pissed off to bother). One of the pythons below had a very interesting `coffee’ colour, unusual for coastal carpet pythons who are normally coloured like the first snake shown.