As if the floodwaters weren’t enough

"Snake haven" ... central Queensland hospitals are stocking up on anti-venom as snakes seek safety from floods

Photo: Janie Barrett | smh.com.au

Queenslanders are having to watch out for poisonous snakes who also want a safe spot on high ground. One farming couple is sharing their refuge with hundreds of them.

They’re also on the tarmac at the airport, they’re in the beer garden at the pub, and they’re looking for nesting places in evacuated houses.

The worry for those who fear snakes is that the cleaning up is likely to prove more alarming that the actual flooding.

Stewart warned that snakes driven out of their holes by the flooding will look for new nesting places when the water subsides. ‘They’re getting into ceilings,’ he said.

According to Hoser, they get under any cover they can find and could attack if disturbed.

And after the waters recede and everybody’s cleared the snakes out of their houses? The rats are likely to go into overdrive filling ecological niches suddenly opened to them by the drownings of other small mammal species in the flood.

Ugh.  No fun, no fun at all.



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2 replies

  1. Surely these are signs of the impending apolocypse! Ugh, snakes. In ceilings!

  2. At least those flooded out in the Gascoyne in WA don’t have snakes to contend with as well as losing their homes and livelihoods. Maybe that’s the reason why the Federal government is offering them less relief funding.