Snakes run hot today – Monday 19 September 2011.
Today, Snakebusters have had call outs to catch venomous snakes at Preston, Eltham (twice), Warrandyte, Research, Sommerville and Donvale. The Donvale call-out at Tindalls Road, was for an adult female Brown Snake sitting in the middle of the lounge room of the family home.
Yesterday we had call outs at Bacchus Marsh, Eltham and elsewhere.
In the last 24 hours the Victorian Ambulance service has reported two adults being bitten by snakes and carted to hospital. One bite was at Warburton and the other at Sunbury.
The snake man Raymond Hoser has issued a warning in the wake of these bites and wrong advice given out by others.“Watching an episode of Crocodile Hunter does not make you an expert.”
Hoser further noted that there had been a surge in the number of snake handlers being bitten and killed, including no less than four this year, all as result of improper training and improper methods being used.
Hoser blames DSE for this because as he says “DSE have issued permits to people with no verifiable experience with snakes to teach people how to handle snakes … it is the blind leading the blind …
Most notably this includes the use of metal tongs to pick up and handle snakes. Hoser says “These should never be used…their use is a disaster waiting to happen”.
Studies have shown that the use of metal tongs increases the likelihood of injury to the snake and bite of handler, by several orders of magnitude.
Snakebusters are Melbourne’s only 24/7 emergency snake removals company. Last month DSE tried to close down the business, but were stopped by VCAT who said that to close Snakebusters would place many Victorians at unneccessary risk of venomous snake bite.
DSE were deemed as being reckless in terms of public safety.
DSE had moved against Snakebusters, after owner Raymond Hoser, published a 64-page journal article exposing a fraud perpetrated by several senior DSE employees in relation to the famous “Sam the Koala”, filmed drinking after the Black Saturday bushfires.
Hoser’s article exposed the footage and photos as a “set-up” involving a captive raised male Koala taken into the fire zone for the express purpose of making the video.
The DSE employees then swapped the male for a female, later paraded to the media as the “drinking” Koala. That animal, not the drinking male, is the (now dead) specimen in the National Museum, incorrectly labelled as “Sam the Koala”.
Several hundred thousands of dollars were raised in the scam without the proper fundraising permits, but none of the DSE employees involved was ever charged over the scam.
Details of the Sam The Koala scam can be found at:
http://www.smuggled.com/Koala_Sam_Is_A_Fake_An_Imposter_and_Fraud.htm
Details of how to avoid snakebite can be found at:
http://www.smuggled.com/snapre1.htm
Tuesday 20 September updates. At 11 PM on Monday evening, I received a phone call to chatch and remove a Tiger Snake found at the back door of a house at Caroline Springs. At the time it was warminsh in Melbourne, althougha cold front had arrived a short time earlier. An hour earlier it had still be an unseasonably warm 26 Degrees celcius, allowing the snake to move about at night.
The following morning, Snakebusters were inundated with enquiries from people and news media in terms of the unseasonably early movement of large numbers of snakes.
On radio 3AW when the case of a man bitten by a snake was raised, I pointed out that inexperienced people should not muck about with snakes.
This also applies in terms of people who need a Snake handler in Melbourne. If you deal with a novice, you have two serious problems to contend with. One is that the person may not have the skills to be able to find the snake.
The second issue is that they may end up being bitten by the snake and instead end up being carted off to hospital.
For further details about this media release, contact details of residents who have had snakes removed from their properties and media inquiries for the purposes of filming venomous snakes from Melbourne, please contact Snakebusters or the Snakeman Raymond Hoser via the details at the website at:
http://www.snakebusters.com.au
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