Odatria_14_NOV13 - Victorian Herpetological Society

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is used to handling all different types on her own – fromharmless tree snakes to deadly taipans – the size of thisone meant she needed help.“I managed to get hold of his head,” she says, graspingher small hands widely in front of her to demonstrate. “ButI had to get someone else to hold down its body so hecouldn’t start wrapping himself around me.”Did she take the injured snake back home with her?“Are you kidding?” she laughs. “I’ve got a two-year-olddaughter and a Staffordshire terrier. It could kill them.”Instead, one of the other members of the FaunaWhitsundays Rescue team took the snake home. Hekept it for a week, cleaning its wounds with saline andgiving it antibiotic shots, before Gray released it back intoscrubland.“Normally I put snakes back near where I find them,” shesays. “But a lot of residents wanted this python deadbecause it was going after their cats and dogs. So Irang the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service and gotpermission to release it near a creek in the national park.I’m not supposed to, but in this case it was to protect thesnake.”And the dog? Happily she survived, but now walks with alimp.Australia is home to about <strong>14</strong>0 snake species, many ofthem found in Queensland. On average, there are severalthousand snake bites a year, of which about 300 requireantivenom and three result in deaths.With such frequent sightings, do snakes really needprotecting?“Oh definitely,” Gray says.“A lot of people don’t realise that it’s illegal to kill them.Some species, like the death adder, are becoming rare.”Loss of habitat is one of the main reasons, Gray says, butso is cane toad poisoning.“The snakes eat the toads but they’re not immune to thetoxins. It’s literally killing them,” she says.She admits that the more common snakes, though, stillseem to pop up everywhere.“Just the other day I had to remove a snake from Hog’sBreath Cafe,” she says. “The waitress, who’s over herefrom Germany, just screamed when she saw it and wentrunning out of the kitchen.”after finding a bird in my pool. They came around andhelped me, and, well . . ,” she says, shrugging and gazingpast the coconut palms towards the turquoise sea and theislands beyond, “I kind of just fell into it myself.”As one of only two authorised snake catchers in theWhitsundays, she can get up to six calls a day in summer.Bites are not uncommon, as evidenced by the red pockmarks and grazes on her arm, after fangs pierced andscraped her skin while she removed a snake from a localresident’s rafters.“It turned on me and started biting me repeatedly,” shesays nonchalantly. “But I knew it wasn’t venomous, so itwas okay.”Gray, who is well known to Airlie Beach locals for hersnake-handling talents, is also skilled at rescuing andcaring for the full spectrum of fauna, from rock wallabies toturtles and flying foxes.Her current “baby”, as she likes to refer to it, is a tubenosedbat that she found trapped on a barbed-wire fence.“I just happened to see it as I was driving past,” she says.The bat, appropriately named “Barb”, is on the mend andwill soon be released back into the wild.But not all Gray’s stories have happy endings.“You should have seen the emu I had to euthanase theother day,” she says, a frown creeping over her face. “Haveyou ever tried to approach an injured emu? They can killyou with their claws.”Her obvious love of animals aside, she denies an innateaffinity with them.“No,” she shakes her head. “It’s just about knowing theirbehaviour. If you know their behaviour, they’re actuallyquite easy to handle.”Even five-metre pythons?She laughs.Gathering her tracking device, straightening her vestand lowering her sunglasses, she heads back down thewooden steps. At the base she turns around.“By the way, if you ever find a snake in your house just callme,” she says.“Just remember, we’re living in their home.”SUVI MAHONENBrisbane TimesOctober 2012Gray has been involved with Fauna Rescue Whitsundaysfor six years. But it wasn’t something she had ever expectedto get into.“I first called the Fauna Rescue Whitsundays team myself34
Gaza Police Catch Crocodile After 2YearsIt took an internet search, shark nets and two weeks offloating in a sewage pond, but Gaza policemen have finallycaptured a crocodile that was terrifying residents.The 1.75-metre crocodile fled his zoo enclosure two yearsago and crawled about a kilometre to a large sewage pitnear the northern Gaza Strip town of Umm al-Naser, saidLieutenant Colonel Samih al-Sultan, who led the hunt.“He had a lot of spirit in him. He wanted to be free,” al-Sultan said, watching the crocodile in its new home in apond with four other crocodiles in a zoo under constructionin nearby Beit Lahiya.“We hope he lives a good life here with his wives,” he saidon Tuesday.The crocodile was brought drugged into blockaded Gazathrough a smuggling tunnel under the Egypt-Gaza borderfour years ago, said zoo worker Emad al-Qanoua. It wasn’tclear how it managed to escape from the zoo in the firstplace.DIAA HADIDAAPNovember 2012Extreme ‘Housework’ Cuts The Life SpanOf Female Komodo DragonsAn international team of researchers has found thatfemale Komodo Dragons live half as long as males onaverage, seemingly due to their physically demanding‘housework’ such as building huge nests and guardingeggs for up to six months.The results provide important information on theendangered lizards’ growth rate, lifestyle and populationdifferences, which may help plan conservation efforts.The Komodo dragon is the world’s largest lizard. Theirformidable body size enables them to serve as toppredators killing water buffalo, deer and wild boar and theyhave also been known to kill humans.Sakher, a crocodile captured and named by Palestinian policeafter it lived in a sewage pond since fleeing the zoo in Beit Lahia,northern Gaza Strip two years ago.Residents said they didn’t leave their houses in theevenings, fearing the scary reptile they say ate their ducksand goats.A research team which included scientists from theUniversity of Melbourne, Australia, Indonesia and Italystudied 400 individual Komodo Dragons for 10 years ineastern Indonesia, their only native habitat. The team thenproduced a model of the Dragon’s growth rate, with resultspublished in the current issue of international journal PLoSONE.“We were afraid he would eat us,” said farmer HassanMohammed of Umm al-Nasser.Wastewater workers discovered the crocodile in the pitabout two months ago, al-Sultan said.Lacking experience in crocodile hunting, he said he wentto the internet to see how to catch the reluctant reptile.Fishing nets were recommended.So a team of six policemen and fishermen sat in a boat inthe sewage pit for eight hours a day for two weeks, tryingto catch the crocodile with the nets.After several failed attempts, they drained the pond, leavingthe croc with nowhere to hide. Then they used toughershark nets to snare him.Al-Sultan said he grew to like and respect the reptile. Henamed him “sakher,” Arabic for “rock,” in praise of hisstubborn attempt to remain free.35This is a female Komodo Dragon guarding her nest in IndonesiaMales live to around 60 years of age, reaching an average160 cm in snout-vent length (not including tail) and 65 kgat adulthood. However their female counterparts wereestimated to live an average of 32 years and reach only120 cm in snout-vent length, and 22 kg.Dr Tim Jessop from the Department of Zoology at theUniversity of Melbourne was a co-author on the study
Page 2 and 3: Odatria2012 VHS Committee:President
Page 4 and 5: HUSBANDRY CONFERENCEMay 11 th and 1
Page 6 and 7: Top Ten Little Known Venomous Snake
Page 8 and 9: In New Guinea, however, many people
Page 10 and 11: Michael and Mike (Swan) were in rad
Page 12 and 13: HUSBANDRYCunningham’s skinks are
Page 14 and 15: winter period. At this time Cunning
Page 16 and 17: BEHAVIORAL CHARACTERISTICS ANDCOMPA
Page 18 and 19: TAMING THE SAVAGE RAINBOW BEASTGrah
Page 20 and 21: INDONESIA REMAINS EPICENTER FOR ILL
Page 22 and 23: HERP HAPPENINGSFlexible Snake Armor
Page 24 and 25: snake in Kurri Kurri, near Maitland
Page 26 and 27: HUMAN FETAL HEARTSThe studies show
Page 28 and 29: The state government has said it is
Page 30 and 31: on the location of the species they
Page 32 and 33: The 15 adult males, 15 adult female
Page 36 and 37: and said that the team were surpris
Page 38 and 39: It struck me that we had something
Page 40 and 41: The team has radio-tracked more tha
Page 42 and 43: the pectoral girdle to the region o
Page 44 and 45: “To do this we focused our effort
Page 46 and 47: we’ve got the rare form there and

Odatria_14_NOV13 - Victorian Herpetological Society

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