Woman finds venomous reptile hiding in Sunshine Coast wheelie bin

A Queensland resident has been caught off guard while taking the rubbish out after making a chilling discovery inside her wheelie bin.

A venomous snake, preparing to shed its skin, has caught an unsuspecting Sunshine Coast woman off guard when she found the reptile in her wheelie bin.

Sunshine Coast Snake Catchers were called to a Landsborough home on Tuesday morning, where the snake catcher had to remove bags of rubbish and burrow through loose papers in order to find the reptile, which he described as “opaque in colour” and “ready to shed”.

A Sunshine Coast snake catcher has shared footage of removing a red bellied black snake from a suburban rubbish bin. Picture: Facebook

The snake, which was preparing to shed, had burrowed itself beneath piles of rubbish. Picture: Facebook

“Imagine opening your wheelie bin to put some rubbish inside and coming face-to-face with a venomous Red Bellied Black snake,” snake catcher Stuart McKenzie said.

“Luckily all the snake wanted to do was hide, so it ducked down under the rubbish bags to hide at the bottom of the bin.

“After a while and taking everything out we were able to locate the little red belly and relocate it elsewhere. Crazy.”

The catcher said the snake was ‘opaque’ and had cloudy eyes. Picture: Facebook

The snake was relocated to bushland. Picture: Facebook

Mr McKenzie said the snake was about to shed its skin.

“He doesn’t really know what’s going on. You can see his eyes are quite opaque and a bluey, cloudy colour,” he said.

“He would have just curled up, waiting for the process to go through.”

The “gorgeous” reptile was moved to bushland.

“We’ve had a bit of rain too which will help him shed his skin,” Mr McKenzie said.

Originally published as Woman finds venomous reptile hiding in Sunshine Coast wheelie bin