Woman's 'terrible' laundry find prompts call for ban deadly household item
Glue traps are already banned in three states. A recent incident has prompted another expert to call for them to be outlawed across the country.
A woman’s 'terrible' discovery on her laundry floor has sparked calls for a common household device to be banned across Australia. Photos supplied to Yahoo News show one of the nation’s most iconic animals literally glued to the floor by a controversial pest control device.
Professional reptile handler Chris Williams was called to an address in Sydney’s west on Tuesday after the homeowner explained in broken English she had a problem. Expecting to find a blue-tongue lizard locked in her laundry, he discovered something far more confronting next to her washing machine.
“She’d locked it in the laundry, and I thought there would be an active blue-tongue in there. So to see it stuck to that trap in such a high level of distress was really upsetting,” Williams told Yahoo.
“The woman told me she uses the traps to catch mice. But looking at it, there was also a skink that was already deceased and a whole bunch of bugs.”
Williams, the founder of Urban Reptile Removal, knew he had to act fast as the temperature was soaring towards 40 degrees at the woman’s Lidcombe home. After taking the shocked animal home, he was able to use a solution to remove it from the trap.
"It's an adult so it's been here for many years, and to be trapped under these circumstances is really unfortunate," Williams said.
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Glue boards are banned across Victoria, Tasmania and the ACT, but they remain perfectly legal in NSW and Queensland. Bats, kookaburras, magpies and native terrestrial mammals have all fallen victim to them, and Yahoo News has regularly reported on the carnage they inflict since 2022.
Since then Bunnings has removed most glue traps from its retail shelves. eBay and Amazon claim to prohibit their sale, but the devices remain accessible across their Australian stores, with some sellers advertising they’ve sold multiple units.
The woman who caught the blue-tongue lizard indicated she intends to continue to use them, and that’s a concern for Williams. “I was trying to say these are no good. But she said, no they’re really good because they catch mice,” he said.
Williams believes the only solution to the problem is an outright ban, with government enforcement to ensure they don’t continue to be sold. An investigation in November by Yahoo found the traps were being sold across multiple stores across Victoria despite them being illegal.
“When they first came out, I tried using one as well, not giving too much thought to the repercussions of it,” Williams said.
“The first day I caught a frog and a skink, and I was absolutely mortified. I hadn't joined the dots I'm embarrassed to say. It was just horrendous. That was probably 10 years ago, so I can't believe that the authorities still allowed them to be sold.
“This sort of indiscriminate trap is just so unnecessary. They're terrible things.”
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