Huge snake found on Tumbi Umbi home’s kitchen bench
Susan O’Hara returned home from the shops to find a huge snake making itself at home on her kitchen bench. What it did next was a surprise to her whole family.
Central Coast
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A Central Coast nurse has described the moment she witnessed a huge diamond python in her kitchen apparently admiring a vase of flowers as “funny, not funny”.
Susan O’Hara lives on a three acre property at Tumbi Umbi and has only ever seen one snake before, when the cat dragged home a dead brown snake.
But her snake-free life ended recently when she arrived home from the shops and was greeted by her daughter, Grace, 18, who understood her mother’s fear of snakes.
Grace told her there was a snake at the back door and urged her to stay in the car while she phoned her father to come to the rescue.
Scared as she was, Susan could not resist having a closer look and even managed to snap a photo.
Daughter Grace managed to shoot some video.
After startling the family cat at the back door, the snake meandered into the living room before using a bar stool to climb up onto the kitchen bench.
“It was very docile and chilled out — a very large diamond python,” Mrs O’Hara said.
“It seemed to like the smooth bench top and slithered over to the floral arrangement and sort of reared up like it was smelling the flowers,” she said.
“I tried to herd it outside, but it didn’t want to go, so I decided it could have the kitchen and went outside to wait for the boys to come home.”
Husband Sean and nephew Nathan, 17, arrived home at this point and Nathan calmly picked the snake up by the tail and took it outside and released it into bush at the bottom of the garden.
“I don’t like snakes but I didn’t want to see it hurt. I didn’t want it back in the house either,” she said.
“I put the picture on my Facebook and it’s been a source of amazement to the whole family ever since.”
FOOD NOT FLOWERS
Australian Reptile Park supervisor Jake Meney said that while it looked like the snake was smelling the flowers, it was more likely it was simply investigating objects in search of food.
Mr Meney said diamond pythons were a species that could tolerate cooler weather and were among the first to emerge from a period of inactivity over winter.
He said they typically fed on birds and small mammals and could be attracted to homes which had chooks or other small animals.
Mr Meney said the diamond Python was the only python in the Sydney region and could grow to three metres in length.
“They kill their prey by constricting them until the suffocate — but they can bite if they feel threatened,” he said.
“Usually they just try to get away.”
Mr Meney said people who found snakes in their homes should call a snake removalist.
“They should be released as close as possible to where they were found,” he said.
“They have a limited home range and may not survive if they are taken out of that range.”
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