With summer comes snake season and all sorts of safety ideas, but one simple strategy tops the lot

Summer in Australia equals snake season and, according to reptile catchers, there are plenty going around at the moment.

But can snakes – or “danger noodles”, as they’re known on social media — be stopped before coming into your backyard or even your house?

Shanna Whan had a close call with a red-bellied black snake last week on her northern NSW property, and decided to reach out on social media for a solution.

With nearly 100 replies, it’s clear everyone has an opinion on what can be done, from planting geraniums and investing in guinea fowl, to putting out bowls of water and purchasing vibrating devices.

Fears for dogs

Ms Whan, who is the founder and chief executive of charity Sober in the Country, works on her property at Maules Creek, near Narrabri – a location she calls “a snake-infested environment 24/7”.

When she came across the red-bellied black snake lurking around the pool, she feared foremost for her dogs.

“I really feel at this time of year for all my ‘dog-mum’ mates because it’s really scary, especially if you have a crazy bloody Jack Russell like I do, because they’re notorious for being fearless,” Ms Whan said.

“Like anybody, you just want to try to protect yourself. But also, for me, I’ve got these little dogs who are my life and very precious to me. Even though it’s business as usual, I sort of felt this need to ramp up prevention.”

After posting a plea for help on the social media platform X, formerly Twitter, she was flooded with responses and suggestions.

“There were some really interesting ones that I had not heard of before, such as planting a certain species of geranium,” she said.

“The solar repellents that you place around the border of your property was a suggestion.”

Neat and tidy 

Ms Whan said she had already implemented some more tried and true remedies and planned to research some others.

“There’s a good old common-sense thing that I totally already do because I’m a neat freak — keep your property tidy,” she said.

Townsville snake catcher James Bindoff says Ms Whan is on the right track.

“All your bushes should be about a metre up off the ground, so no big thick bushes in garden beds that are hard to access or [that] provide good shelter,” he said.

Snake repellent ‘doesn’t work’

Mr Bindoff said people shouldn’t waste their time and money on purported remedies and deterrents.

“Any product that you buy — a snake repeller spray or those vibrating, solar snake repellers — none of that sort of stuff works,” Mr Bindoff.

“They make a sound and then they vibrate, so if you’re a snake that works off vibration over hearing, you’re going to hear a high-pitch vibration, which is that beep, and then you’re going to hear the ground vibrating.

“To them, that says that there’s an injured animal that potentially could be food, so you’re actually dragging them in rather than taking them out.”

If a snake does enter a backyard or house, the best thing to do is let it pass or call a snake catcher, Mr Bindoff said.

“There’s not a lot you can really do, and there’s nothing that we recommend that you do, other than take a photo and keep a very good close eye on it so that when we do get there, we can easily relocate it, [and] we’re not spending 45 minutes to an hour trying to look through a backyard when we’ve been called,” he said.

The reptile re-homer also warned against inexperienced people trying to emulate professionals on social media for the sake of “likes”.

“If you don’t know what it is, you’ve got a 50-50 chance. You might get bitten, or you might not,” he said.

“I’ve been to places where someone’s holding an eastern brown in their hands because they didn’t know what it was, so they just grabbed it and picked it up waiting for me to get there.”

Wildlife aware

Ms Whan insists she doesn’t hate snakes, she’s just wary.

“I’m not a snake hater. I have great respect for our wildlife and the role snakes have in our ecosystem, but I don’t like not knowing where the venomous ones are,” she said.

“It does get a bit tired to see catchphrases like, ‘the only good snake’s a dead snake’.

“The answer is not easy, and I’m not sure what the solutions are. It sounds like a very politically correct thing to say, but prevention is always better than cure, isn’t it?”