A Queensland snake catcher was shocked to find not one, but ten snakes, lurking in the ceiling of a Gold Coast home with scaled bodies caught hiding in insulation and high in the rafters.
Mitch Thorburn, from South East Reptile Relocations, was called out to the two bedroom home in Willow Vale a week ago Sunday and found a variety of species located in the crawl space.
He told 9news.com.au the callout smashed his previous record of eight snakes in one roof cavity, an accolade he had held since 2018.
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Thorburn said he received the call after the home owner spotted four snakes dangling from the ceiling.
"When I got up there you could tell the roof had been inhabited by many snakes in the past, there were skins and snake poos scattered about," he said.
"But there was no real indication as to how many were up there.
"We originally thought it was just the four."
The four snakes were bagged without incident, then Thorburn glimpsed more scaled bodies.
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"We then found the additional six, which was pretty surprising to say the least," he said.
"I thought four was a pretty decent number so 10 was well beyond what I expected."
In total, Thorburn removed five common tree snakes, two brown tree snakes and three coastal carpet pythons over the course of 35 minutes.
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He said the reptiles were all released back into a suitable habitat - far from the home.
The callout comes as snake season gets off to a cracking start.
https://www.facebook.com/GoldCoastSnakeCatcher.SERR/posts/pfbid02mkJBmgrTm6ZQgzV1F18mcarq38MYw9DBTTPRKiubEEzSCSGAv5gVvNKTnpeNxxqqlLast week Steven Brown, from Brisbane North Snake Catchers, encountered a "weapon" seven foot brown snake in the backyard of a home in Brisbane.
Australia's snake season starts around September and runs to about April as the animals begin breeding.
