03/09/2026
Why do snake catchers charge a call out fee?
Before anything else, there’s something I think people sometimes forget about what we do.
When you call us because there’s a snake in your home, we stop what we’re doing and put your family first.
It doesn’t matter if we’re sitting down having dinner with our own families, out with friends, or asleep at 3am.
When that phone rings, we get up, leave what we’re doing and come to you.
Your emergency becomes our priority.
And this job is just one example of what can happen when we answer that phone.
We never know what we’re walking into.
It could be under a house, on a roof, behind a wall, backyard, down a stormwater pipe and the list goes on
Sometimes we arrive and catch the snake in 30 seconds.
And from the outside, it can look easy.
“Why did that cost so much? He caught it in 30 seconds.”
But you’re not paying for those 30 seconds.
You’re paying for the years of experience that allow us to make those 30 seconds look easy.
You’re paying for the driving, fuel, insurance, equipment, training, licensing, time spent searching, safely relocating the animal, finding suitable habitat for its release, transporting it there and keeping the records required by wildlife authorities.
And there’s another part of the job people don’t always see.
There is genuine risk involved.
If you make a mistake at many jobs, you might get a warning, learn from it and try again.
If I make a mistake handling one of Australia’s highly venomous snakes, the consequences can be very different.
We take that risk every time we answer the phone.
So when you call a snake catcher, you’re not paying for someone to simply “come and grab a snake.”
You’re paying for someone who is willing to drop what they’re doing, put your family’s safety first, drive to you, assess the situation and use years of experience to safely deal with it.
That’s why we charge a call out fee.
You’re not paying for the 30 seconds it took to catch the snake.
You’re paying for everything that makes those 30 seconds possible.
