Cairns Snake catcher David Walton has reported a surge in snake attacks on
Cairns cats. Snakes are common in the rainforest around Cairns. If your property is close to bushland, parks, creeks or farms snakes are likely moving nearby at night. Snakes will find your property more attractive if there is plenty of shelter from plants and long grass, and particularly if there is food in the form of rats, wildlife or birds including poultry and cage birds. Spilt feed from pets like birds, poultry and horses also encourages rats and thus snakes.
Minimise the snake risk around your house by keeping an area with short grass or paving around the house (if trees hang over your deck, window or roof snakes will feel welcome) and keep you cat inside, at least at night: both cats and snakes are nocturnal so its common they meet at night.
Also check out this amazing video of a huge snake which recently ate a pet cat!
Cat-killing pythons on the rise in Cairns
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
© The Cairns Post
LOCK up your moggies - cat appears to be the flavour of the month for the Far North's pythons.
About nine felines have been consumed in backyards across Cairns in the past five weeks.
The culprits are scrub pythons, hungry for prey that has been flushed out of the city’s rainforests and bushy areas because of heavy rainfall.
Cairns Snake Removals operator David Walton said he had never seen as many attacks as there had been this month.
Most of the snakes that have consumed cats are more than 3m long.
Mr Walton said as snakes were nocturnal hunters, owners should keep their pets indoors at night.
Dr Dallas McMillan from the Cairns Veterinary Clinic advised owners to make their yards as unattractive to snakes as possible.
Hunger pangs: This scrub python had to go without yesterday when professional snake catcher David Walton stepped in to save a cat as a potential meal. Picture: TOM LEE
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