Rhonda Acworth’s scary encounter with eastern brown snake

A regional Queensland woman got the fright of her life when her cat started hissing and she turned around to the chilling sight of a venomous eastern brown defying gravity on her flyscreen. More photos:

Rhonda Acworth had a near miss when she came face to face with a eastern brown snake.

A Glenwood woman’s easy going morning took a turn for the worse recently when she found herself face-to-face with an eastern brown snake as it climbed up the flyscreen at her home north of Gympie.

Rhonda Acworth said her “blood ran cold” when she first saw the reptile casually busting the myth that venomous snake can’t or don’t climb.

“I was petting my cat Bella on the kitchen floor when suddenly she turned away from me and started hissing,” she said.

“I turned out to see what was going on and I saw it (snake) trying to climb through the flyscreen.

“I was so lucky the snake then bundled itself behind the inner and outer windows allowing me to trap it there.

Rhonda Acworth had a near miss when she came face-to-face with an Eastern Brown snake.

“The thought that it has snuck in through an open door and made its way into our kitchen is very creepy.”

Not knowing what to do, Mrs Acworth contacted neighbours for help before calling Ed Smith from Gympie Snake Catchers, who confirmed yesterday that it was a myth that venomous snakes like eastern browns and taipans did not climb.

“They can certainly climb,” Mr Smith said.

“Snakes can climb a tree most certainly. The thought snakes cannot climb is a fantasy.”

Mr SMith said he once found a taipan on top off a 90m fire observation tower on top of Wolvi Mountain.

Mrs Acworth’s unwanted visitor proved hard to get rid of.

Efforts to “poke” it out of the window with a stick into the catching bag failed, as did “dousing” it with cold water.

Rhonda Acworth had a near miss when she came face-to-face with an eastern brown snake.

The snake “would not even budge” much to the frustration of all involved.

Finally, after almost three hours, a solution arrived in the form of a clothes hanger which was used to “push” the snake out of the gap.

“Ed was able to slide the hanger into the gap and poke the snake into moving, it was only minutes before we had him in the bag once this occurred,” she said.

The incident has rattled Mrs Acworth, who said she was still feeling jittery 24 hours later.

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Ed from Gympie Snake Catchers was the one to remove the Eastern Brown from Rhonda Acworth’s house

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It is not the first time Mrs Acworth has had snakes in her Glenwood home.

“Last summer we had a nosey death adder pay us a visit,” she said.

“It was very docile and calm and we were able to move him on ourselves.” By comparison, the eastern brown had seemed “agitated”.

Dean Godfrey of Hervey Bay Snake Catchers said snakes were more scared of people than people were of them.

His advice to anybody who came across one was to “leave them alone” and let the professionals look after them.

The event has been a lesson learnt, Mrs Acworth said.

“The moral of the story is to always keep my doors closed from now on.”