A “very small live snake” was found at the home of a Christchurch traveller who had just returned home from Bali.<\/p>\n
Biosecurity NZ surveillance and incursion manager Wendy McDonald said trained handlers were sent to a Christchurch property after a report of a small snake found in the suitcase of a traveller who had recently returned from Bali.<\/p>\n
“A very small live snake was found wrapped around the toe of a jandal in the suitcase.”<\/p>\n
Preliminary identification by a herpetologist suggested it was a wolf snake, a type of non-venomous boa. The snake would be euthanised.<\/p>\n
McDonald said one or two snakes were found at post-border locations annually, with more typically intercepted at the border.<\/p>\n
“These are usually non-venomous and often arrive dead, due to cargo treatment.”<\/p>\n
Reports were responded to “as quickly as possible”, she said.<\/p>\n
“Our handlers undergo intensive training, including specialist instruction in Australia where they work with live snakes under expert supervision. This training is refreshed every two years.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A “very small live snake” was found at the home of a Christchurch traveller who had just returned…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":103943,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[1313,64,63,41605,75,128,338],"class_list":{"0":"post-103942","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-animals","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-christchurch-canterbury","12":"tag-environment","13":"tag-science","14":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103942"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103942\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/103943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}