Anyone who lives locally, or knows anything about Bungendore, will know we have a lot of snakes. Almost every person will have a tale to tell and indeed some people have had some truly frightening encounters.

During the summer months (including all of Spring and at least half way through Autumn) a significant part of our time is spent assessing, diagnosing and treating envenomated animals. The variety and timing of clinical signs which effect an individual animal can vary immensely. Pepper (pictured) was lucky enough to survive a bite in February but by the time he presented to the clinic he was already affected by the venom.

Clearly a Jack Russell seen wrestling a tiger snake and now presenting to the clinic vomiting and collapsed does not take a lot of diagnostics to identify what is wrong and prompt treatment is necessary. However, more often than not, the altercation with the snake is not witnessed. Clinical signs can be vague at best and even some diagnostic tests will come back negative even though a patient has been bitten. All this contributes to the significant challenges of snake-bite diagnosis, treatment and management.

One of the challenges that we have faced as a veterinary clinic this summer (as opposed to the 2023/24 season) is the sheer volume of cases. This summer we have seen an almost 100% increase in the number of patients we have treated. This puts a significant strain on our resources as it has not been an unusual scenario to see multiple animals from the one household present at once. This means all hands on deck to ensure everyone is assessed and treated as quickly as possible. Then some animals require on-going intensive treatment because they are so sick.

As for why we have seen almost double the number of snake-bite victims this year; well, there are a lot of theories and the actual reason is probably best left to a herpetologist to answer. Ultimately snakes are part of life in Bungendore, so as the season draws to a close its probably a good to start preparing (as best we can) to limit the chances of an encounter next year.