ELI WATERS, Australia – Snake whisperer Drew Godfrey was dressed for the beach when he got the most unusual call.
The owner of Hervey Bay Snake Catchers, a 24/7 snake relocation business operating on the Fraser Coast in Queensland, Australia, was ready for a nice kayak adventure before his latest customer sought out his help.
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“So just when you think you’ve seen it all in this job, someone calls you and says their wife has sucked a snake up with the vacuum cleaner,” he said in a Facebook post on May 4.
Godfrey told local media that he was called to a resort in Eli Waters after the managers said the snake had been sucked up while they were cleaning one of the units.
In the video of the rescue above, Godfrey first checked the vacuum’s tubing before pulling the hatchling from the appliance’s dust bag.
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It turned out to be a small yellow-faced whip snake, a species of venomous snake in the family Elapidae – a family containing many dangerous snakes.
“Poor little guy,” Godfrey said. “I bet that sucked for you. I’m just glad It’s okay.”
At the time, Godfrey said he was afraid that he was going to uncover a dead snake when he first arrived, but the tough little bugger survived the trip in the vacuum. The snake was unharmed – just a little dusty and confused.
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After the rescue, Godfrey said he released the snake into the wild.
Godfrey said there’s been a huge spike in people catching snakes themselves lately.
“I assume people watch a few YouTube videos and think it looks easy,” he said. “But anyone that goes to work every day makes their job look easy, that doesn’t mean it is! If you found a bomb in the backyard, you’d call a bomb squad, you wouldn’t try to disarm it cause you watched Die Hard once!”
Godfrey said it’s illegal to handle and relocate wildlife without the correct authority.
“That’s how people die too,” he adds. “Please don’t become a statistic!”