Australian snake-handling in the post-Steve Irwin age

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Above: Snake-catcher Chris Peberdy at work (that’s a non-poisonous carpet python) in suburban Darwin.

Recently, while traveling in Australia’s Northern Territories (not long, in fact, after researching my latest Slate.com series), I met a 23 year-old named Chris Peberdy, who contracts with the city of Darwin as a snake catcher. About twice a day, his cell will ring and he’ll speed off to homes and private property to find and remove (often poisonous) snakes that wandered in from the jungle and wound up in toilets and living rooms. Chris has been doing this for five years, and he is, in effect, one of many up and coming Steve-Irwin-protégés in Australia.

As macho as his job sounds, he’s basically the herpetological equivalent of a Star Trek nerd: All he thinks and talks about is snakes, and he’s never really done anything else. Growing up on a cattle station in the bush, he started catching snakes at age 12 — and he drove to Darwin to start snake-contracting work the day he finished his secondary school exams. He absolutely adores the animals, and his house is full of all the snakes he’s caught over the years.

Here are some of the things he told me when I was with him on the job one day in Darwin:

  • “That’s right. Of the ten of the ten most poisonous snakes in the
    world, all ten are found in Australia.”
  • “The Mulga snake venom contains an anticoagulant. It barely scrapes into the top ten, but it’s still deadlier than a king cobra.”
  • “People get killed because they’ll attack a snake with a shovel instead of pushing it away with a broom.”
  • “Guys become instant snake experts when they’ve been drinking. I knew a guy who was drunk and draped a tarpon around his neck. That’s like putting your nuts in a blender and plugging it in: You’re just inviting something bad to happen.”
  • “I get lots of calls from paranoid people who think they saw a snake. Even if there’s no snake, they like it when I show up and talk with them. It calms them down, and that’s all they really wanted.”
  • “Because I’m young, people try to contradict me, or ask to see my manager. Some get offended that I don’t wear khaki. They think if you handle snakes you’re supposed to wear khaki.”
  • “Film crews and reporters still show up and ask me to put them in touch with Steve Irwin. I don’t know how they missed that one.”
  • “How many times have I been bitten? Kind of a personal question, isn’t it? It’s like me asking you how many times you’ve masturbated. I haven’t been bitten yet, but each day is a new day.”

As it turned out, Peberdy got bitten the day I was with him. Chris Haslam of the London Sunday Times, who was with us at the time, wrote this story about it.

Posted by | Comments Off on Australian snake-handling in the post-Steve Irwin age  | March 12, 2007
Category: General

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