Episode 3 Rhys to the Rescue

Want to see some of Wales's wildest of animals?

You've come to the right place.

My name is Dr Rhys Jones

and I'm based at Cardiff University's School of Biosciences.

I'm licensed to handle some of the country's rarest

and most dangerous animals...

MEN SHOUTING

OK, everybody stay still.

..and if you find a snake in your bathroom

I'm the man the authorities will call in to help you.

But it's not just snakes -

I'm licensed to work with everything from owls to iguanas...

Oh, my ear!

..Chimps...

to seals.

Because I love the scaly, the furry, the crawly and the unknown.

-What did you think you've seen?

-A black panther.

-A black panther?

-A black leopard.

THEY LAUGH Oh, my God!

And I can help you to love them too.

In this episode of Rhys To The Rescue

there's a cobra crisis call out...

'We're looking for a cobra - where's the nearest antivenom?'

I'll tell you where it is, it's Liverpool!

..a scary spider from overseas...

-I've got to see this spider gone, I've got to.

-Yeah, that's fine.

..and some beautiful badgers.

(Bit lost for words, actually.)

A stunning summer's day

and an emergency call out from wildlife crime officer PC Mark Goulding.

We have an Indian cobra.

An Indian cobra? In south Wales?!

Better put the flashing blue lights on!

SIREN BLARES

So, Mark, what's the story?

We had a gardener report to a colleague of mine

that he had seen a strange looking snake.

He's gone on the internet, had a look,

and he's 100% convinced that in the lady's garden is an Indian cobra.

Mrs Patel, who is the home owner,

further added that when she touched it with a stick

the animal's head reared up

and she indicated that there was some kind of hood.

I think we need to err on the side of caution,

if people are saying they've seen an Indian cobra

I want to treat it like we've also seen an Indian cobra

until I see otherwise.

That's a highly venomous snake.

We are going to have to be very, very careful indeed.

No problem at all.

I've dealt with a few snakes in my time

but an Indian cobra in Bridgend?

That'll be something special - and scary.

Also known as the spectacled cobra and the spitting cobra,

these beautiful snakes are noted for their white hoods,

their distinctive marks and their highly venomous bites.

If one of these has been dumped in the Patels' garden

it is very, very serious.

We arrived to find Mr Patel and his gardeners

discussing what they've seen.

Is never B, it's V on the back of the neck, V shape.

This one had a square white band on the back of the neck.

Straight band or V?

Straight, it looked like, almost, erm, rectangle.

So, how long would you suggest it is?

I would say about 75 centimetres.

-OK.

-Just under a metre.

-Yep.

'It soon becomes apparent that the snake has been around

'for quite some time.'

-Two or three years ago...

-Yeah.

-..it's came here...

-Yeah.

..in this bush and wife just came down, packed the vehicle,

she'd gone, and he came out from the bush -

not to disturb, nothing.

And she jump, and she moved out, and she gone on that big bush,

and she went upstairs and looking from upstairs,

and he just standing and looking to wife.

-Right, OK.

-When you say standing, what do you mean standing?

-He's up.

-He was actually up?

-I know this snake, I know this snake well.

-Like, he's, he's going like that and he's watching the wife...

-OK.

..and then I called the police and then they, everybody,

-whole team came - they couldn't find it.

-OK.

If it is what you believe it to be,

if you think it's from a cobra family,

you know, they are highly, highly venomous

and we need to be mindful of that.

-Can we go and have a look then?

-OK, let's have a look.

I think we need to get on.

The Patels have a beautiful, large garden

that backs onto thick scrubland and then onto open fields.

In fact, it's IDEAL snake territory.

'With so many hide-outs and food sources

'it's like an all-inclusive holiday resort.'

There's still a lot left for it to eat at the moment.

Mammals will still be active,

fish are still swimming around quite happily there

and, just talking to Mr Patel,

there's frogs as well, in his garden.

Cobras quite like frogs.

There's quite a bit of banking behind these bushes

and it's quite good climbing area.

I'd really like to have a look in here.

Might be a nice warm place to curl up for the night.

You can see lots of deep rooted areas in the back of the garden,

where the snake can curl up.

Cobras are really, really excellent climbers

so the last thing you want to do

is stick your head in to have a look around,

get hit on the back of your head.

We're looking for a cobra - where's the nearest antivenom?

I'll tell you where it is, it's Liverpool!

So, if anybody got bitten,

I tell you, it's absolute panic stations to try and save a life.

We've got a large tunnel, very clean edges

so a snake would be able to get down here quite easily.

If this wasn't being used

then I would expect there to be cobwebs all over the front of this

-and there's not.

-There's not?

So something has been going in and out of here on a regular basis.

'With plenty of hiding holes and no obvious sign of the snake

'we move up into the scrubland and I make a deeply unpleasant find.'

-Yo, Mark!

-Yeah?

Quick as you can.

-If we have got a venomous snake, what would you expect to see round here?

-Oh, look at that!

That cat has clearly been killed on site.

I don't think it's just keeled over and died here.

They usually hide in corners to die.

Exactly, they don't die out in the open like that.

If an animal dies out in the open like that it's because it's in pain.

It's either been shot, it's been poisoned,

it's fallen over and died on the spot.

So, yes, you're right, this is a little troubling.

'Finding that cat's made it a bit more real'

because up until then I was starting to think it could be a grass snake.

They can raise their heads up and they can even hood as well.

It's not really what I wanted.

I don't want evidence adding, supporting a possible venomous snake.

PC Goulding removes the collar in the hope of finding an owner.

We have no evidence that this cat has died of a snakebite

and it's been dead too long for me to perform any lab tests.

So, with the light beginning to fade,

we head to the field beyond the scrub for a rethink.

This amount of scrub...

-..you could have a family of snakes, let alone one snake.

-I know.

And the back garden connects to the scrub.

This scrub then connects to this field

and we've got green corridors connecting all over the place.

I'm going to suggest to you that this snake

is not just living in Mr Patel's garden

but Mr Patel's garden constitutes a very small section

of its overall territory and it's just visiting periodically.

-I think there's a wider problem here, a wider issue.

-Yeah.

-Can I make a suggestion?

-Please do.

Why don't we try and stake this animal out

and then put up remote cameras

to see if those cameras pick up any evidence

of whatever snake these people are seeing

cos they're clearly seeing something.

We fix trail cams around the Patels' garden,

including down the sewage pipe.

Any animal moving across their infrared beams

will trigger a video recording.

We'll return in a couple of days to check the evidence.

In the meantime,

PC Goulding and I are called out on another exotic emergency.

A lady in Barry believes her bulldog has been killed by a spider bite.

As unlikely as it may seem,

we've got good reason to take this seriously.

The lady's son travels regularly to the Middle East

and could have accidentally carried back a venomous spider

capable of killing a dog.

Mrs Selby is very distressed.

-I believe this spider bit my dog.

-You do, do you?

-Yes, I do...

-OK.

-..because I left the house,

nice sunny day, I had him out in the yard, running around...

-Sorry.

-That's OK, sorry, take your time.

-Come and sit down.

-Yeah, come and sit down. Take your time.

Leave it up there,

-I don't want anything crawling in it if it's here.

-OK.

-OK. OK...

Relax, just take a seat. We're here to help.

He had a tongue that was long and purple hanging out,

his lips was curled back and they were black

and his eyes was popping out of his head.

I called the vet, soon as he come in he says, "He's had a heart attack."

But, two days later, put one...left foot into the slipper,

went to put into the right and the spi... I could see movement in there

and the spider came out of the toe of my slipper and it run.

I couldn't find it because I was stunned, I couldn't move.

My dog would have been under the bed spread-eagled,

if it had come out then he would either started to play with it or...

And the spider bit him. That's what I think.

-That's your belief, that the spider actually killed the dog?

-Yes.

The spider was a creamy-yellowy colour,

he was about that big when he got his legs up, you know?

I just want this spider out otherwise, in the end,

-I'm going to have to leave. I will have to leave.

-OK.

Time for a spider hunt.

Her son is a seafarer and he's travelling back and forth from Iran.

The lady has alluded to the fact the gentleman brings his washing here.

It would be quite easy for a spider to smuggle into that washing

and be brought directly here. Now, that's quite a frightening thought.

'You might well ask yourself

'what kind of spider might have been brought back from Iran

'but we already have plenty of exotic escapees

'happily breeding in Wales.'

False widow spiders are one -

cousins of the black widow spider that can on occasion kill humans

but, luckily for us, the black widow spider doesn't live here in Wales

and none of the six species of false widow that do are deadly.

-That looks quite suspicious, that.

-Do you see it?

-Yeah.

Not a house spider.

OK, let's keep looking.

We've also got a dozen native species

capable of dispensing a nasty nip.

Black lace-weavers, tube webs, Walnut orb-weavers,

Rustic wolf spiders, cellar spiders

but none of them match Mrs Selby's description.

Beige in colour, you know?

It's things like camel spiders, actually,

which aren't true spiders, of course,

that would be in that area of Iran.

Related to both spiders and scorpions,

camel spiders are their own distinct species of Arachnida.

Fast, furious and the size of an adult human hand, they'll bite

but they're not deadly.

-The thing is, they're not venomous.

-Yeah.

So, if it's a camel spider

it certainly didn't kill the dog through invenomation.

Could've done through fright.

And it's a bulldog, so bulldogs can be frightened very easily

and have heart attacks very easily.

The best advice we could give her is to bomb the entire house.

'Don't worry, the bomb is an insecticide

'that will kill spiders and insects but nothing else.'

I've got to see this spider gone, I've got to see it go.

That's fine, that's fine.

We'll activate it,

it'll run the fumes, it'll go right the way round your house.

You'll have to move into your son's house for about 24 hours

and it'll completely clear the house.

What ever you saw will have died.

'We say our goodbyes to Mrs Selby

'but only on the understanding that I'll return in a couple of days

'with my spider bomb.'

Meanwhile, back in Bridgend, it's time to check the trail cams.

Will we find any evidence of a cobra or any other snake

in Mr Patel's back garden?

We've got a big cat, look at that, look, looking at the fish!

-Look at that, way to go!

-Caught on camera!

-And look at the infrared as well.

-Well, we know it's working.

'From the garden camera we get a series of birds...

'..cats...

'..and gardeners...'

Oh, look at that!

'..but no snake.

'And from the camera down the drain?'

WHOA!

-That was maybe a rat.

-Yeah.

-Look at that.

-Oh, yeah.

-Yeah, yeah, that's a rat.

-That's a rat.

So, we know now there's a sustainable food supply.

Oh, that's really good.

A food supply but still no evidence of a snake to eat it.

Don't get me wrong, I don't doubt that the Patel family

and their gardeners have seen the snake on several occasions

but the dead cat aside, there's nothing that leads me

to believe we are dealing with a venomous reptile.

In fact, in the days since the original callout

I've developed my own theory as to what this snake might be.

Less than a mile from the Patel's house is St Mary's golf course.

Ten years ago, when I was still student at Cardiff University,

I undertook a survey of the reptiles in the area

and discovered something I had never seen before...or since.

What I found was a grass snake that would blow up its throat,

it would hood up, exactly the same way as a Cobra

and that got me thinking, "Why would a grass snake do that?"

Well, it's going to make itself looks very, very large

and that's going to be intimidating to some of the natural predators

that it would find round here.

Have I ever heard of a grass snake doing this before? No.

Has anyone ever recorded it before? Not to my knowledge.

Do we have, here, in south Wales,

a unique population of grass snakes

that have learnt to intimidate predators by producing a huge hood?

I think so.

'But there's only one way to prove it

'and that's by capturing a grass snake.

'PC Goulding and I return to the fields at the back of the Patels' house.

'We're going to lay down some roofing felt.

'Corrugated and heat retaining, the perfect hidey-holes for reptiles

'and the small mammals they like to eat.'

-I really want to get a south facing edge.

-OK.

-What about up...?

-See up here?

-Yeah, that's set back a bit.

-We can hide them away, yeah.

'I'm hoping they'll attract our mystery snake, but it'll take time.'

And, meanwhile, I've got to bomb Mrs Selby's house.

I doubt if we'll ever know for sure if a spider bite killed her poor dog

but Mrs Selby's been so evidently the traumatised by the incident

that I've brought an insecticide bomb with me

that'll kill any eight-legged arachnid still lurking inside.

So, Mrs Selby, how have you been since I've last seen you?

A little bit better. Getting used to the idea it's here

-and we're going to find it.

-Yeah.

-With your help.

-Definitely.

But before I set off the bomb

I want to hold a brief spider identity parade.

I'll show you the first one and I want you to tell me

if this is anything like what you saw that night.

Suspect number one, the common house spider,

found throughout the Northern Hemisphere,

it'll bite if provoked but its toxins are too weak to harm.

-No, not that one.

-Not that one?

This one is a slightly bigger spider, I don't want to alarm you.

-Are you OK seeing this? Yes?

-Yes, fine.

'Suspect number two, the non-venomous camel spider.'

Had a live specimen snuck back in her son's luggage?

This wasn't the spider.

No, the one I seen was mostly all legs and hair.

Oh, that's fine, absolutely fine so far. This is the next spider.

Suspect number three, the yellow sac spider.

A non-native alien invader present in the UK.

Aggressive and venomous, any bite would need medical attention.

-Well, this is the pose what I was trying to explain to you.

-Mm-hm.

The colour is similar but...more beigey.

-Can I offer one more...

-Yes, go ahead.

-..spider?

These can be a lot more beige than this as well.

Finally, suspect number four, the common-or-garden garden spider.

Absolutely harmless - unless you're a beetle, an earwig or a woodlouse!

-No.

-Not that one either?

No, the one you just showed me is...

..is more like it.

-That's the one?

-Yes.

'The venomous yellow sac spider.'

Can you show me how big that spider was again? Just approximately.

About that big.

That's actually a lot bigger than this spider gets

-so it's still a bit of an enigma for us.

-Oh.

But this is the stance of the spider.

-Is this the poisonous spider?

-That one is, yeah.

-Yeah.

-OK. That's the closest one?

-Yes, the closest.

-OK.

'Well, the evidence for a venomous spider

'is conclusively...inconclusive,

'but I'm going to do my best to give Mrs Selby some peace of mind

'by setting off my insecticide bomb.'

All of these cupboards, if we can leave the whole lot open.

Yeah, will do.

'We need to open every cupboard, every door and every drawer

'to make sure the chemicals penetrate every nook and every cranny.'

Do you really think you'll get rid of the spider, one-way or another, today?

We will DEFINITELY get rid of any spider that's in here

because the chemical we're going to use is very precise, very clinical,

in killing insects but, even more so, spiders.

'Time to light the bomb

'and the Mrs Selby to leave her house for the next 24 hours.

'The fumes are non-toxic to humans but fairly unpleasant.'

There won't be any live spider in there by tonight.

When I'm not attending emergency call outs

or undertaking research work at Cardiff University

much of my time is spent working as an environmental consultant.

What that means is that whenever there's a new building development,

a new road, or bypass,

I'm called in to make an assessment

of how it will impact the wildlife in the area.

As an environmental consultant I have the power to modify

or even stop any development that is having a negative impact

on any protected Welsh wildlife.

Today I'm driving to Llandysul, in West Wales,

to do an environmental impact assessment

on a proposed countryside road development.

I've got to make sure the work

isn't going to negatively affect the local wildlife -

particularly Llandysul's badger population.

Nocturnal, secretive and shy,

badgers don't exactly advertise their whereabouts

so it'll require a bit of detective work on my behalf.

And to the trained eye, badgers do leave tell-tale signs of their presence.

'Badgers, they're like little tanks of the countryside, aren't they?'

They're very flat on their stomachs

and so when they go past they flatten everything.

As well as badger paths, I'm looking for paw tracks,

hair and just maybe a bit of poo too.

'Look at that!'

Look at those footprints.

These tracks would have been last night.

A badger has walked through here, you can even see the claws.

That's amazing! These are really good prints - look at this!

One, two, three, four, five. It's going off in this direction.

This is starting to look like it's about a badger path.

I think we've picked up the trail.

Now, we've got a breach there, look. Look, look, look, look!

You can see something's dug its way underneath.

Now, that is badger. Look at that!

That's immense.

That's a HUGE hole going under there.

It's badger.

Basically, if you pull badger hair

it won't break as easily as lamb wool or sheep wool.

That's really tough and it's snagged underneath here.

So, we've got badger hair there.

I just want to find that conclusive piece of evidence.

If I could find maybe just some, some badger poo.

That would be fantastic, wouldn't it?

I have some! I have some!

That is badger poo - I am absolutely cer... Oh!

Yes, 100% sure this is badger poo.

What you can see here,

this is a badger that has been absolutely gorging on blackberry.

Very potent, very fresh.

That's a badger, here.

That, for me, is conclusive evidence of badgers living in this area.

I don't expect to see one in the flesh and with very good reason.

As an ecologist, if I'm looking for badger in the countryside

I hardly ever see them.

Badger are really secretive animals

and we hardly EVER come across them when we're surveying for them.

The cherry on the cake

would be if we can actually get some film footage of the badgers

so I've set up a little camera here.

I'm going to leave it here a week and see what we get.

'Well, it's quite unbelievable.'

I could see a Red Kite circling round and around -

they're really good scavengers

and I thought, "What is he trying to scavenge?"

I came down and found this.

This is just around the corner from the camera

and it looks like a young male badger.

Very, very sad.

It's a roadkill, it's been hit by a car, knocked over.

This is really quite sad and we see it quite often in the autumn.

Some of the younger males will start to wander around

and look for mates at other setts,

and they won't be familiar with the roads,

and they get knocked over by vehicles.

Well, not the absolute proof I would have chosen

but I would still dearly love to show you some live badgers.

I wait until nightfall and then drive to a nearby secret location -

a rural garden that badgers have been safely visiting for generations.

And there I settle myself in on the garden bench...and wait.

(I love the name for these guys in Welsh, which is mochyn daear,

(Translates roughly as earth pig.)

(I think it's such a great name.)

(There seems to be a whole family here.)

(If badgers could choose just one thing to eat it would be earthworms.

(And, actually, earthworms can supply a badger

(with ALL the water it needs.

(And these guys will hoover up

(anything up to 200 earthworms in a single night.)

(Maybe 20,000 in a year.)

(These guys will eat anything.)

(Voles, mice...

(..they'll even dig out rabbits given half a chance.)

(What an incredible animal.)

(I was really hoping that we'd get and see, maybe, a badger.)

(Maybe two.)

(We've had the entire family out here.)

(I'm lost for words, actually.)

(I just didn't expect them to come out this close.)

(Just utterly incredible experience.)

'And my badger encounters didn't end here.

'One week later, when I checked the infrared camera,

'it had recorded living, breathing proof of badgers at Llandysul.'

In law, any building work has to keep a minimum of 30 metres away

from any existing badger sett.

In Llandysul the sett was located a good 100 metres away

from the proposed road work.

Therefore, I was able to give the all clear to the company

to go ahead with the development.

As an environmental consultant I'd done my job

and both badgers and builders were happy...

..this time.

I still have one last case to close -

the mystery of the Bridgend cobra.

I'm convinced our cobra is not cobra at all.

I believe it's a member of the local hooding grass snake clan

that I discovered ten years ago.

I'm returning to check the reptile tins laid out around the local area.

If I can capture a grass snake

I can ask the Patel family for a positive ID.

'That's the first of our tins.'

(Let's have a look.)

There is a slow worm.

So we are attracting reptiles here.

Look at that, there are reptiles here.

We've got an adder but we want a grass snake.

# Where are all the grass snakes? #

Grass snake, grass snake! There, there, there, there, there!

There are grass snakes here.

Is this what Mrs Patel saw?

Well, obviously, she saw a much bigger animal than this

but she'd recognise the colouration.

I think it'd be very interesting to show her.

-Hello, Mrs Patel, how are you? Are you all right?

-Yeah!

I think I have the answer to our enigma, our mystery snake.

-Is it in there?

-Well, I have...

..the same species in this bag as, I think,

-as the snake that you saw out here.

-Oh, right.

Now, the one that you saw out here must have been what,

-about four foot long?

-Yeah.

-So, this one, I didn't want to scare you,

I did want to bring you a great big one up,

so what I've got is a little snake, about this big,

but I just want you to comment on the skin tone -

looking at the colouration, the pattern

and see if there are any similarities at all.

-Now, if I bring this snake up to you. This is a baby.

-Yeah.

It's a very, very young one.

If you have a look at the patterning there.

I know everything's quite similar.

So, you think the patterning is very similar?

-Yeah, but you know where, like, all the dots, these, are?

-Uh-huh.

-They were all on top as well.

-They can be. They do vary a little bit.

Can you see, if you look closely,

-can you see some of the dots, look? On top?

-Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah? So, it's very similar then, really?

Now, this is a British grass snake and they vary in colours

but they get absolutely massive.

In Britain they can get to about 1.6 metres long.

One thing that's particular to these animals

is they have these fantastic behaviours,

so some of them will feign death

and others that I have found in this area,

within one kilometre of your house,

have actually hooded up and they've spread the neck,

the side of the neck, like a cobra,

and stood upright to intimidate a would-be predator

-in the hope that the predator will back off.

-Oh, my God, yeah.

-Happier now?

-Oh, yeah!

-Case closed.

In the next episode of Rhys To The Rescue,

I help an iguana with an eye issue...

That's terrible, isn't it? Yeah.

..I do a dirty job on the "cheep"...

..and I bring in the heavies to build a reptile hotel.

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