Suddenly waking in the middle of the night, a woman felt something heavy on her chest. At first she thought it was probably her pet dog lying there. But within seconds she froze in fear: it was not a dog but a python almost 8 feet long.
The incident happened recently in Brisbane, in the Australian state of Queensland. The woman, Rachel Bloor, said that last Monday night she suddenly felt something heavy on her stomach and chest in her sleep. Thinking it was the dog, she reached out to touch it, and something smooth moved under her fingers. That was when she realised a python about 2.5 metres (almost eight feet) long was sitting on her.
Startled, she immediately called her husband. When he turned on the light, he told her not to move. "He said, don't move. There's a big python on you," Rachel said.
Removed through the window
Her first thought was to ask her husband to take the dogs out of the room. "If my Dalmatian had seen the snake, it would have been a terrible situation," she said. Then, keeping calm, she slowly slid out sideways from under the sheet.
Most surprisingly, instead of calling a professional snake catcher, Rachel put the python out through the window herself. She believes the snake got in through a gap in the plantation shutters on the window, climbed into the second-floor bedroom and finally curled up on top of her.
"The snake was so big that even while it was coiled on me, part of its tail was still outside the window," she said. She added that the snake was not very agitated when she handled it.
This python, known as a carpet python, is not venomous and is usually found in Australia's coastal areas. Rachel joked that the snake did not frighten her that much, and that she would have been more scared of a frog.
Why snakes are being seen more
Snake catcher Kurt White said snakes move about more at this time of year because the breeding season has ended and eggs are starting to hatch. Hot weather is also bringing snakes out to bask in the sun, he said.
In his view, however, the number of snakes has not increased; rather, as bushland shrinks and new housing is built, people are seeing snakes more often. "They need somewhere to live, and our backyards are now ideal shelter for them," he said. The report is based on The Independent.
Source: Jagonews24. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.
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