An extraordinary day out with an Australian snake catcher 

Eddie Hughes, a retiree in Sydney, went to his upstairs bathroom to put some clothes in the laundry basket.  He was shocked to discover a bright green tree snake “curled around the bowl of the toilet”.

Since moving from Ireland to Australia 44 years ago, Mr Hughes, 67, had seen his share of unusual creatures but this  was the first time he had seen a snake inside his house.

So he and his wife put in an anxious call to Harley Jones, a professional snake catcher.

“It gave me a start,” Mr Hughes later told The Telegraph. “I called my wife and we thought we better call a snake catcher.”

For Mr Jones, one of a handful of licensed snake catchers in Sydney, this was the kind of call he likes the most: an indoor job.

Dressed in his earthy brown uniform emblazoned with his business name – “Snakes in the City” – he arrived at the house, greeted Mr Hughes and his wife Carolyn, 65, and made his way to the upstairs bathroom.

He grabbed the tree snake by the body and placed it in a pillow case, which he sealed with a clamp.

“When they’re inside the house – in a living room or a bathroom or somewhere – it’s easy,” Mr Jones told The Telegraph. “You just go in and pick them up."

"When you get a call and it’s someone who saw a snake moving through a backyard – it’s often long gone.”

Mr Jones agreed to let The Telegraph spend a day in his company as he travelled around Sydney, rushing to  catch and remove a range of venomous and non-venomous species.

Australia has many of the world’s deadliest snakes - including several highly toxic species spread across urban areas  - though bites which inject venom are rare.

About one to five people die each year. Not all of the snakes which make their way into Australian homes are dangerous, but many people would still prefer a professional handler to remove them.

For Mr Jones, the first call of the day came in at about 10am: A grandfather had been eating breakfast in his back garden and spotted the tail of a brown snake, one of the world’s deadliest creatures.

Brown snakes are one of the most commonly encountered species in Australia and cause the most deaths.

According to the Australian Museum, their bite can be painless and go unnoticed but  can cause “progressive paralysis and uncontrollable bleeding”.

“It was a bit of a shock,” the grandfather told The Telegraph. “I was just having my breakfast and I saw the tail hanging there by the rocks. I had my grandkids here in the garden yesterday playing just where the tail was – that’s what I’m worried about.”

Mr Jones swiftly arrived and inspected the garden but the snake had moved off and could no longer be seen.

He said he usually wears gloves while searching for brown snakes, but made no attempt to cover his hands as he rummaged under the rocks of the grandfather’s garden. 

“Snakes are a beautiful animal that will stay out of your way if you stay out of theirs,” he said.

Mr Jones’s next task was to travel to a stretch of bushland in western Sydney to release  the tree snake from the Hughes’s residence.

By law, catchers in the state of New South Wales are required to release captured snakes within three days in a suitable habitat, no further than 12 miles from where they were caught.

Mr Jones’s other jobs for the day included removing a highly venomous yellow bellied sea snake which had been found by life guards at Bondi – perhaps the country’s best known beach – and releasing an eight-foot diamond python which he had removed earlier in the week from the gutter  of a roof in northern Sydney.

“At the moment, I’m catching about four or five [snakes] a day, but it can be as many as fifteen,” he said.

In recent weeks, snakes around Australia have made headlines following a series of frightening encounters with humans.

A father and his 11-year-old son were bitten by a deadly tiger snake in their home in Melbourne (both survived); a 79-year-old man in Brisbane woke up twice in a week to find a carpet python crawling across his neck; a woman driving to Adelaide was “petrified” to see a red-bellied snake pop up from beneath her windscreen wiper.

Such encounters are more common during the Australian summer, when snakes are more active.

Zac Bower, a venom and reptile keeper at the Australian Reptile  Park, north of Sydney,  said some Australian species have been in decline in recent years due to land clearing and suburban sprawl. 

It is not clear whether the population of brown snakes is increasing, but they have been moving into urban areas because rubbish and waste provide a steady supply of rodents to consume.

“In the warm months, snakes  start to feed and look  for partners,” he told The Telegraph. “They are cruising around a lot more which is causing people to run into them. They are not looking to try to kill us or bite us. If you leave them alone, they will leave  you alone.”

Somewhat reassuringly, Mr Bower added that snakes are “not more likely to go into houses than they used to”.

“It is more that people have access to a phone and can take photos and post them on Facebook, so you hear it from more,” he said.

Mr Jones, 35,  had long kept snakes as pets and decided to become a catcher two-and-a-half years ago after running a recruitment business.

In the state of New South Wales, licence holders must have completed a reptile handling course and have at least two years experience in handling venomous snakes.          

Mr Jones charges a fee of £130 for each callout. But the work slows down from mid-April to mid-August because the snakes are largely inactive and often take shelter during winter.

He has removed snakes from sandpits in preschools, from the front garden of a hospital, from under a desk at  a hairdressing studio and from inside a top-loading washing machine.

Two months ago, he removed a three-foot diamond python from inside a bed in western Sydney. It was discovered by a woman who was having her sister to stay in a guest bedroom.

“The python was crawled up where the pillow was,” Mr Jones said. “I don’t know why they go to the beds - it happens more regularly than you’d think.  I’ve seen some snakes in some pretty crazy places.”

He said he has only been bitten once – a non-venomous bite by a red-bellied black snake -  but insisted the incident was his fault.  

“We are programmed to fear snakes from a young age,” he said. “But they’re not a social animal. They actually don’t want to be near people.”