Snake repellant
- Thread starter jenmal
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Anyone who's opened a reptile book will see there's hundreds of harmless snake species in Australia and that's excluding pythons! It's a safe bet to treat all snakes as if they were deadly and don't try to capture them unless you know what you're doing. I've personally captured many snakes that posed a threat around the home. Snakes i consider a threat are those which lose their fear of man through human interaction. Very easy to step on a placid snake lying at your front doorstep. A good snake is a dead snake according to uneducated bogans
three posts advocating aggression
if youre a mathematician then try the fact that 90 % of snake bites occurred when people tried to kill the snake
dont be aggressive to them and you just improved your chances of not being bitten by 900 %
being aggressive to a snake just teaches them that we are aggressors and they are likely to retain that thinking in their minds until they next meet one of us .
if you see one , just dont move for 2 seconds so it can evaluate you and determine youre not aggressive and it is likely to just move away
if youre a mathematician then try the fact that 90 % of snake bites occurred when people tried to kill the snake
dont be aggressive to them and you just improved your chances of not being bitten by 900 %
being aggressive to a snake just teaches them that we are aggressors and they are likely to retain that thinking in their minds until they next meet one of us .
if you see one , just dont move for 2 seconds so it can evaluate you and determine youre not aggressive and it is likely to just move away
Snowy
Jason Snow
I was just remembering the 1st Batman movie where he had a shark on his leg and he just happen to have a can of shark repellent, nothing to do with snakes though
have to agree 100% with Headsup, aggression is met with aggression calm with calm, as such dogs often get the short end of a stick.
I come across snakes all the time... red bellies mainly last week my dog stepped on one by accident the snake about 2 meters long barely turned around he scampered off real quick.
I used to pick them up off the road when i was a kid, think how you would react if a shovel was being swung at you V's coming into a new area and finding it was occupied...you move on naturally.
If yo8u ahve problems in your home i recommend this stuff, you can get 20 meters for about $70 cut the roll in half and run it around the base of your fence, snakes mice, big lizards cant get through it. Unless they come over a tree.
If walking in thick grass i.e.e detecting stomp your feet every now and then they will keep clear.
http://www.bunnings.com.au/wire-mesh-mouse-90cm-6-5x6-5x0-6mm-5m-20014_p3040081
I come across snakes all the time... red bellies mainly last week my dog stepped on one by accident the snake about 2 meters long barely turned around he scampered off real quick.
I used to pick them up off the road when i was a kid, think how you would react if a shovel was being swung at you V's coming into a new area and finding it was occupied...you move on naturally.
If yo8u ahve problems in your home i recommend this stuff, you can get 20 meters for about $70 cut the roll in half and run it around the base of your fence, snakes mice, big lizards cant get through it. Unless they come over a tree.
If walking in thick grass i.e.e detecting stomp your feet every now and then they will keep clear.
http://www.bunnings.com.au/wire-mesh-mouse-90cm-6-5x6-5x0-6mm-5m-20014_p3040081
I've had the odd close encounter with snakes and I do what headsup said "freeze", the snake will check you out and then leave. Mating season is when snakes are the most aggressive.
Mick
Mick
KarlS
Karl
Few things about snakes. Although I agree that best defenses against being biten is to leave them alone, there are exceptions. The venomus snake around your house or campsite is dangerous, it will not go away just because you are there. They will be attracted to the camp because little crumbs of food you drop attract insects,lizards,birds and mice. And that's what they hunt.
When walking in the bush with detector, the snakes you see are little danger to you. It is those you don't see until last moment or you step on them that will bite you. I just cannot understand how anyone can walk in the bush with headphones on. I use ear phones in one ear only. The other ear is to listen what is going on around me.
I have read of many encounters with Black snakes, browns and trigger snakes on this forum. But no one mentioned Deadh Adder. There is plenty of them around popular prospecting spots in NSW. And they are very dangerous as they look like fallen tree branch and the won't move until you step on them.
By the way, you can eat venomus snake,but in the words of Crocodile Dundee - you can live on it but it tastes like sh it. Kind of chewy
Karl
When walking in the bush with detector, the snakes you see are little danger to you. It is those you don't see until last moment or you step on them that will bite you. I just cannot understand how anyone can walk in the bush with headphones on. I use ear phones in one ear only. The other ear is to listen what is going on around me.
I have read of many encounters with Black snakes, browns and trigger snakes on this forum. But no one mentioned Deadh Adder. There is plenty of them around popular prospecting spots in NSW. And they are very dangerous as they look like fallen tree branch and the won't move until you step on them.
By the way, you can eat venomus snake,but in the words of Crocodile Dundee - you can live on it but it tastes like sh it. Kind of chewy
Karl
I've only ever killed snakes around the oldies house and usually those are caught up in the snake mesh (horrible stuff but my parents love it), but I really dont like too - they keep the vermin down. You definitely get use to them living in the country. A bloke at work only ever kills them with his 4-10 - overkill literally, Ive always found a shovel is enuf
GoldCheddar2005
Julie
I agree with not killing them, however, when Goodman Fielder use the storage behind us for the bread deliveries, and a massive a slab of concrete, railways next to us and Canefields, provide plenty of food for all snakes, I never kill pythons and tree snakes. With small children around occasionally coastal taipans and eastern browns hang around, theyre not after water, generally the vermon around the sheds, I will kill those. Generally too, if you encourage pythons to hang around, you may not have a problem with all problems, including cats. Especially large amethystine pythons and Swampys, according to Rob, because they will eat anything.
Around the camp skin the top of bull ants nests and spread it round lightly the snakes wont cross it, just be carefull the bull ants dont come looking for you
GoldCheddar2005
Julie
Snowy might be having an appropriate joke, perhaps in Jackie Chans version of Karate kid where Jayden Smith is doing the snake impersonation, kung fu style.
joe said:
I didnt know that, thanks joe, could you elaborate more on the vitamin c, stopping short of ME grabbing a orange juice loaded syringe and ramming it into the poor Dr's ass if he ever got bit..........
G
Guest
Forget the snake cocktail with cloves and stuff. My kids used to go to a small school which backed onto a creek. Brown and Black Snakes everywhere. The mesh mentioned earlier does work but even better is to spray Phenyl which is labelled wheelie bin cleaner around the perimeter fence and redo it after rain. Its so bitter smelling that snakes wont go near it. Have seen a snake come towards a sprayed area, suddenly stop, then simply go back to where he came from.
Using Vitamin C is a last resort and who carries that in their first aid kit anyway.. If you get bit, you need to get to a hospital real quick. The longer you wait the less your chance of survival. If your a long way from hospital, use your mobile to call help.
Don't try and drive yourself if you are more than 30 minutes from hospital. You could go unconscious on the way and crash. Get someone else to drive or stay put and wait for help to arrive.
Using Vitamin C is a last resort and who carries that in their first aid kit anyway.. If you get bit, you need to get to a hospital real quick. The longer you wait the less your chance of survival. If your a long way from hospital, use your mobile to call help.
Don't try and drive yourself if you are more than 30 minutes from hospital. You could go unconscious on the way and crash. Get someone else to drive or stay put and wait for help to arrive.
In the bush I watch the ground and never step over a log, step on it,give them a wide birth, at home near the house I call 410. If you see them first I find is best, scrap your feet and make noise on the ground when you walk; don't like that surprise of movement under my foot, takes time to climb down from the tree and change your jocks.
Cheers LL
Cheers LL
Death adders are the ones that worry me the most, they wont move and are nearly impossible to see amongst fallen leaves.
If you have black snakes near your property, you are lucky, leave them alone, they are not aggro, and eat other snakes, Ive seen blacks eat death adders twice and a small eastern brown once. Usually, if you have a black snake around, there are not many or any other snakes about.
If you have black snakes near your property, you are lucky, leave them alone, they are not aggro, and eat other snakes, Ive seen blacks eat death adders twice and a small eastern brown once. Usually, if you have a black snake around, there are not many or any other snakes about.
snake trivia
Although Australian snakes can be very venomous, comparatively little is known about the protein compositions of venoms from Australian snakes, compared to those of Asia and America. Wide access to antivenom and adequate medical care has made deaths exceedingly rare with only a few fatalities each year. Australian snakes are known to possess potent venom: approximately 5 of the world's top 10 drop for drop most venomous snakes, that have been tested by LD50 in mice, inhabit the continent.[3] However, it must also be pointed out that Australian venomous snakes tend to have smaller venom yields and fang lengths when compared with venomous snakes from other continents and that the test involving drop for drop toxicity to mice may not represent drop for drop toxicity to other animals (including humans).
davent said:
I never kill them unnecessarily (when they get in the kid's toybox would be an exception though - had a cobra do that at a friend's house but the dog started barking furiously at the box). Biggest feature of Australian snales is probably not that many have small yields (extra toxicity can compensate) but the fangs. Where I used to work in Africa most of the snakes had large, "front" fangs and they were hypodermic (like a syringe). Most here are the opposite, in fact I doubt we have any with hollow fangs at all, and some are "back-fanged" and have trouble getting a good bite if small. Instead they have a groove down the back of the fang, that the venom runs down (ie - just a groove, open to the air). This has important implications. A bite from something like an African mamba or cobra, the large fangs go right through your clothing and skin and they start pumping it into you very efficiently (we had to carry anti-venine and a syringe in our field bags - 10 minutes consciousness, 40 minutes max of life without). With the Australian snakes their delivery is a lot less efficient with smaller fangs and spillage on the skin surface - and more to the point, if you wear thick woollen hiking socks, gaiters etc they will absorb a lot of the venom before it reaches your skin surface. So in thick vegetation I wear those. Have had two guys bitten working with me, both were OK (one didn't notice until next morning when his ankle blew up like a balloon and he saw the puncture marks). Most African snakes are either dominantly neurotoxic (cobra, mamba) which attacks your nervous system, hemotoxic which works like cyanide so that the limb turns black like a huge bruise (boomslang or tree snake), or cytotoxic (cell-destroying) so that the flesh is destroyed and without treatment the muscles will peel off your bones (ultimate loss of limb) - these included various vipers and adders, which are more short, fat and slug-like. I've heard Aussie snakes are various combinations. Whereas in Africa we had an anti-venine we carried that could treat all three types, we don't here. So you MUST NOT wash the bite (and whatever you do, do not cut the site or suck it). You should get a roller pressure bandage and bind it firmly (NOT really tightly) over the site and roll it on up the limb on the heart side of the bite. Immobolise the person as much as possible and try and keep them calm - these things slow the distribution of the poison. Get them to hospital fast (if you have killed the snake take it too, but don't get bitten doing it). At the hospital they will unroll the bandage and apply a test to the bandage where it was in contact with the bite - this is important, it tells then what the snake was and what anti-venine to use.
You might know all this, if not it is important. Carry the roller bandage in your field bag in the bush.
Commonly only 2 to 3 deaths per year in Australia, 400 plus per year average in South Africa alone (with only double the population)...; lightning strikes and bee stings kill a similar number per year in South Africa. People have often survived here without treatment - when I was young farmers in remote areas used to try to not move energetically and go to bed, if they could not get help (and less treatments then). Don't recommend it though if you have an alternative....
