A Queensland family got the shock of their lives when a surprise intruder slithered into their home last week.
Gillian Blacket couldn’t believe her eyes when her husband sent her a horrifying video of a snake that had hitched a ride on a bedroom ceiling fan in Samford Valley in Queensland’s Moreton Bay region.
Believed to be a harmless brown tree snake, it headed inside to escape the heat.
This unwelcome intruder took a ride on a ceiling fan in Queensland’s Moreton Bay region
‘The electrician had only been up in the ceiling last week, so I sent him that video and said ‘the fan’s not working’,’ Gillian Blacket said
After climbing up onto the ceiling fan, the snake wrapped its body around the blades and held on for dear life before it slithered back into the ceiling where it had been hiding.
‘I’d be scared if I woke up and saw that,’ one person commented on YouTube.
Mrs Blacket said not many people wanted to live in their home after the video went viral online.
‘We’d just had a fan moved in that room so it left a hole. The snake came out of the ceiling onto the fan,’ Mrs Blacket told Quest Newspapers.
‘I said ‘I’m not coming home until that snake is out of the room’.’
The family say they haven’t seen a snake in six years.
‘The electrician had only been up in the ceiling last week, so I sent him that video and said ‘the fan’s not working’,’ Mrs Blacket said.
The brown tree snake grows up to two metres and can be found in forested and urban areas on rock faces, in tree hollows or the ground.
‘Some are even found on rafters in buildings,’ the Queensland Department of Environment and Heritage Protection website states.
Mrs Blacket told her husband she wasn’t coming home until the brown tree snake was gone
‘It is a skilled climber of trees, rock faces and buildings. While the brown tree snake does have venom, they don’t normally harm humans. However it can strike aggressively at its prey, launching itself into a series of s-shaped loops when threatened.’
Summer may be over but that doesn’t mean the snake danger has passed.
Experts have warned the public to be on the lookout as baby snakes begin hatching in droves.
Humid conditions at the start of autumn will see a baby snake boom across Australia, as hatching season for the deadly eastern brown snake reaches its peak.
‘For the last eight weeks, we’ve been getting a 60 calls a day,’ Snake Catchers Adelaide’s Rolly Burrell recently told Daily Mail Australia.
‘We’ve been working 12 hour days, seven days a week since last August. With the way things are going with the weather, it doesn’t look like it’s going to drop off anytime soon.’
Brown tree snake can be found in forested and urban areas on rock faces, in tree hollows or the ground. They are harmless and usually don’t attack humans.