Sydney Wildlife Rescue is treating a wide variety of animals at risk from the wildfires, including the Tiger snake. A carer carefully attempts to save one of Australia’s venomous snakes, the Tiger snake.
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TRANSCRIPT
(dramatic music) (ambient room noise) - So, this is a tiger snake.
It's one of Australia's deadliest snakes.
And it's best to stay well back when he's doing this.
And what's happened to it?
- Uh, this guy's come in in poor body condition.
He's a bit emaciated.
So I'm here getting the vet's to check him out today, see if there's an underlying problem with it.
- So it could be because he's stuck in the burnt area with nothing to eat?
- It could be.
It's probably extended a bit further than that.
But definitely the fire's not going to help this fella.
So it's best to get him checked out now, and hopefully get him on the mend.
- (ambient room noise) Here's the little fella.
- So when did you find him?
- He's come in a couple weeks back now.
- Oh, okay. He's been here the whole time?
- Yeah, yeah. He came in just sorta at the start of the fire thing. - Okay.
But he come in a bit emaciated, and he had three layers of, basically, skin still attached that should have been shed.
- As in like, three different shed?
- Yeah, still attached.
So, he was soaked and they were removed.
- Okay.
- But, as you can see, it's still uneven down here around the tail area.
It feels like scar tissue.
I'm not a hundred percent.
- Yeah. Has he, have you fed him at all?
- Yes, yes, he has started eating.
- Good.
Oh, his spectacles are really dry.
So, snakes don't have eyelids like us.
They don't blink.
So they have that protective layer over their cornea that is kind of like a permanent, a permanent transparent eye lid, basically.
Kathy is the opthalmology vet, so she's gonna, I just want her to have a look and see whether there is damage further down.
- So this is looking like a pretty good prognosis?
- So, he's got retained dessicated spectacles.
And if he has a normal shed, as long as there's a healthy spectacle underneath, he should be okay.
So we just lubricate in the mean time.
And but he's got a healthy spectacle underneath, we just don't want to pull it off because he will have an exposed cornea, which will be really painful.
- So it's just a matter of eye drops.
- Eye ointment we'll go with.
For the safety for putting in eye ointment into a tiny snake.
(laughter) Simple!
- And apparently, you can't even have a cut on your hand?
- No, no that's exactly right.
As you can see here, the venom that's already in the tube, if I was to pull him out to, basically in a technique called heading, if I was to have a small nick or scratch on my hand, and the venom was to touch it, it could still cause an envenomation.
So you don't actually have to be bitten.
Just an open wound and the venom going over that is enough to cause a severe envenomation.
- And so you could die?
- Yeah, most definitely.
Yeah, most definitely.
- That's powerful.
- Yes that's exactly right, so caution's always gotta be taken.
Every step of the way when you're dealing with these guys.
(suspenseful music) (ambient room noise) (wind whirring)
