South East snake catcher David Miles can count on both hands the number of near death experiences he has endured in his nearly 80 years of life.
On each of these hands is a bite from a tiger snake, one on the thumb on his right hand (with a fang still inside) and the other in the palm of his left.
Mr Miles has also “had a bull and horse roll over me years ago on a station”, been squashed between two logs in 1983 and had a heart attack and five bypasses.
“My body has been knocked about a bit but I am still alive,” he said.
Mr Miles said after his last bypass the doctor told him “I have given you an extra 25 years of life but something else will get you”.
Not long after that, Mr Miles was bitten by a tiger snake for the first time in September 2020.
The second bite came only a few weeks ago when Mr Miles was trying to treat a tiger snake for lice by bathing it in a bucket of solution.
“I had obviously stirred it up a bit and it would not go in the bucket to get bathed in the solution we use and it just went bang and bit me there and hung on and pumped a heap of venom into me,” he said.
“The first one that bit me, bit and let go but it still pumped a heap of venom in,” Mr Miles said
“Some of my tiger snakes are as good as gold, they will crawl over my feet and sort of sit there and look at me but every now and then you will get one that has got an attitude.
“With the antivenoms that we have got now, if you do the right thing when you get bitten then you’re not going to die, I have proved it twice.”
Mr Miles said he was told by the doctor after his most recent bite “that if I get bitten again, I could be dead”.
The bite led to a week long stay in hospital with Mr Miles transferred to Adelaide due to the antivenom affecting his kidneys.
After over 35 years in the business, Mr Miles said he has been forced to reevaluate whether he will continue catching snakes, however he will keep holding shows with the reptiles to educate the public.
“I have not made my mind up because I have been doing it for 36 years and it’s hard to just say I will stop just because I have been bitten twice,” he said.
“I have to be extremely careful because of this last bite, not because of the bite but because of the antivenom.
“I will still do shows because I still want to teach people about snakes.
“They’re an interesting animal. I mean anything that’s that long without legs and moves as quick as they can, they are an amazing thing.”
As an experienced snake catcher, Mr Miles cares for more than 20 snakes in a shed out the back of his house including inland taipans which are the most venomous snakes in the world.
“He’s a good snake to handle but his bite is 50 times stronger than any other snake in the world,” he said.
He also keeps eastern brown snakes, tiger snakes and a red bellied black snake.
“Brown snakes are the second deadliest in the world and I am glad it was not a brown snake that got me,” Mr Miles said.
Mr Miles’ daughter Terry is a licensed snake catcher who now lives in Lucindale but “she does not catch many now” and Mr Miles has mentored a now qualified young snake catcher.
