Now, to snakes on a train, or a train set to be more precise, which was making news last week:<\/p>\n
EDWINA BARTHOLOMEW:\u00a0A Queensland reptile wrangler has rescued a snake from a model train set. Residents called the snake catcher to the property after a venomous visitor was spotted napping inside the tunnel \u2026<\/p>\n
– The Morning Show, Network Seven, 13 August 2025<\/p>\n
Crikey!<\/p>\n
Not the ideal place for a snake, you\u2019d think.<\/p>\n
And in a fun or terrifying twist, would you believe:<\/p>\n
MARK FERGUSON:\u00a0He initially thought it was made of rubber.<\/p>\n
STUART MCKENZIE:\u00a0There he is, have a go at that, \u2018ey, in amongst the train set.<\/p>\n
– Seven News 6pm (Sydney), 13 August 2025\u00a0<\/p>\n
Snakes in train sets, pretty unusual right?<\/p>\n
Ten News explained though:<\/p>\n
ANGELA BISHOP:\u00a0Daytime temperatures in Queensland have been warming up and that means more snakes \u2026\u00a0<\/p>\n
– 10 News Lunchtime, 13 August 2025<\/p>\n
Lucky then the snake wrangler was called out to coax the little guy out of his hidey hole.<\/p>\n
But we reckon snakes must be quite the rail enthusiasts, because Sky News was reporting a strikingly similar story three years ago:<\/p>\n
STUART MCKENZIE:\u00a0\u00a0\u2026 There he is, have a go at that, \u2018ey, in amongst the train set \u2026<\/p>\n
– Sky News Australia, 15 Nov 2022<\/p>\n
So actually, not news, at all.<\/p>\n
It turns out, this vision was from not 2025, but 2022, then re-posted last week with a fun caption, sure to catch the eye of some time-strapped producer:<\/p>\n
CHOO CHOO! A snake in the model train set!\u00a0<\/p>\n
Call us anytime \u2026<\/p>\n
– Sunshine Coast Snake Catchers 24\/7, Facebook, 11 August 2025\u00a0<\/p>\n
Which nobody did, because the snake catchers tells us not one media outlet actually rang to verify when this video was actually shot.<\/p>\n
And why did the snake catchers repost the video?\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Snake catcher, Summer Woolston, told us:<\/p>\n
In the winter the snakes are a little less active. \u2026 so sometimes when we are low on content we reuse one of our videos.<\/p>\n
– Phone, Summer Woolston, Sunshine Coast Snake Catchers 24\/7, 15 August, 2025<\/p>\n
Look, we love a good snake video as much as the next person, but can we offer just one piece of advice\u2014the next time a tantalising piece of content slithers its way into your social feed, reporters might like to at least make a phone call to make sure the news is, in fact, news.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Now, to snakes on a train, or a train set to be more precise, which was making news…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":79505,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[64,63,128,338],"class_list":{"0":"post-79504","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79504","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=79504"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79504\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}