We caught this bloke on the road the night before. Rather than leave him to be run over he was relocated out the back of the base.

looks like a water python bakes

The two do look similar. The back yard I'm in belongs to a mate down the road who is a snake nut (he has 6, two dimond,3 carpet and a file snake)He's the bloke we call when we get a call from someone that has a snake in their yard. He's done a snake handlers course in Darwin and like to count scales and photograph them before letting them go. I've even managed to talk the wife into letting me get on I'm going to go for an olive.



The top one is an olive, the bottom a water. I believe the olive grows a bit larger.

Bloke I used to work for was doing some research for a university somewhere, he had 150 death adders around the verander of his place, caged of course. He was breeding them for research, they give birth to live young, which were frozen and sent to Sweden.They tried to mate brothers and sisters but there must be something in their dna , most of them failed to concieve and those that did there only 1 or 2 very dodge offspring.
He found a 3 metre king brown on his back doorstep one morning , he picked it up ,checked it out,picked the ticks off of it and dropped it of in the scrub

I don't go near the venemous ones! Havn't seen that many out hunting either.

Cool snake, glad you moved it to a safe location!

The biggest biological problem for the snakes up here is the cane toad,the conservation commission has established colonies of reptiles and mamals (sp)on islands off the coast to keep the gene pool alive until we can get the toads under control.
These toads originally came from Hawaii early last century,they did'nt get just any toad, they got the biggest ,ugliest and most toxic toad they could find and we hav'nt managed to control it yet, any sugestions Ann ??

Don't the snakes eat them? They eat toads here. We also have skunks, they will eat the toads. SO I kill a lot of skunks. I don't think you'll want to trade toads for skunks there in Oz.

You'll probably have to go after the toads breeding grounds. They need water don't they? I would think some sort of larvacide could be developed to kill off the tadpoles....

Dragon fly larvae kill a fair number of frog and toad tadpoles here.

that's the problem Ann ,the preditors eat the toads and die ,and living in the tropics there is so much water you can't posibily kill even 10% of the tadpoles, the territory is basicly uninhabited, we have 1.3 million square kilometres with about 200,000 people so there are big area's that never see people for years at a time, i'll have to get the air rifle out and go big game toad hunting on my 5 acre lot , we get a big heap of dragon fly's after the wet season but how many times can a toad breed in 5 months of wet weather?

I just noticed you are from Humpty doo Darwinmauser, I know a few blokes from there...
Both are "snakeies"!

Bakes, an olive is a good choice to keep.
They are a very calm natured snake.
If you've dealt with a few water pythons you'll notice they tend to be fairly bitey.

But not as bitey as a carpet snake, I speak from experience. spent a couple of years on Syrimi's bannana farm.Do you know george Syrimi or middle point farm?

'Fraid I don't know him.
You must know Matt Yorkston up there?

Ann
Even the tadpoles are piosionous. There is a bloke down Mataranka that has a big pond with Barra in it. He feeds them for the tourist and the fish have learned not to eat the tadpoles and toads. One snake, the fresh water snake can. And the crows and kites have learned to flip them over and eat from the belly.

Why not offer a bounty on the toads? I understand that they're a real big pain in the ass to all parties concerned with them. Perhaps a couple bucks per toad would help shrink the population?

A bounty has been thought of but the national parks people think we are all stupid and will kill native toads as well as cane toads. I think it would be a great idea. 20 cents a toad, get the kids involved, good pocket money for them.

Bakes, I did not know you had any native toad species! How cool! Can you post some good photos of them? Remember, I love toads so no dead ones please.

After checking some web sites they all say we don't have any native toads, just frogs that look like them, well there you go, you learn something new every day.


Toads

quote:

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there is a beetle species there which the frogs ignore but the toads relish, and when they eat these Lavender Beetles, they die.

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I've seen this around the section. We were sitting outside having a cuppa and watched a toad eat these beetles. Went for a drive, came back and it was dead.

Those must be some beetles to be able to kill a toad. Ya best get a patent on them. When you make your millions have all your friends out for a nice week of hunting spotty pigs!

I thought Bakes might like a Python like this one .....



Not sure if it is an olive python though,

What snake?

Bakes

I will send you something nice up to you in the post when it arrives to me.