Australian man finds python living in his toilet

September 6, 2009

Sophie Tedmanson in Sydney

An Australian man had to call in the snake catcher after he discovered
a 10ft-long python living in his toilet.

Erik Rantzau was used to seeing the enormous Northern carpet python slithering around his property, set in a rainforest 19 miles from Darwin in the Northern Territory. Occasionally the snake — which he had nicknamed Axl — would slide through his lounge while he was watching television. But last month Mr Rantzau discovered the reptile curled up inside the bowl of his toilet.

“I’ve seen it on and off around the property for the last ten years, but never in the dunny,” Mr Rantzau told The Times.

“But I happened to be walking past the bathroom a few weeks ago and I saw it there. So I shut the lid and called the snake guy.”

Chris Peberdy, a snake wrangler, tried to remove the snake from the toilet but it was so thick that it became wedged in the S-bend and wouldn’t move.

The pair then scattered talcum powder throughout the house so they could tell when the snake had left the building. A few days later tracks appeared to be leading from the bathroom to the back door through which the reptile had escaped into the garden.

Mr Rantzau said he had taken to using an outside toilet for fear the snake would return to its new home in his house. And a few days later it did.

“It was starting to get inconvenient and it was obvious that the snake wanted to stay there, so Craig came back and he managed to trap it properly,” he said.

Last week Mr Peberdy extracted the snake from the pipes by easing it out whenever the python relaxed. He then removed it and relocated it in the wild.

The reptile expert, who catches up to 1,000 snakes in the Darwin area every year, said he has never seen anything like it. “Last year I caught a 1.8m (6ft) black-headed python which was moving around in the toilet system of an apartment block, but I’ve never seen one that has called a toilet home,” Mr Peberdy said.

He said there was no explanation for the snake’s odd behaviour but suggested it may have wanted to stay in the toilet bowl to stabilise its body temperature.

“I’ve got no idea why it was doing it, it’s very quirky behaviour,” Mr Peberdy said.

He said the Northern carpet python, a semi-aboreal snake found in most parts of Australia, is “completely harmless to humans”.

“But it still possesses a mouthful of very sharp teeth and this one had an attitude to match, so if you felt something bite you on the bottom while you were on the toilet it would give you a hell of a fright,” Mr Peberdy said.

As for Mr Rantzau, whose rural property attracts many types of Australian wildlife including possums, kangaroos and bandicoots, he will now look twice when nature calls.

“You think you might find a spider or a green tree frog in your dunny, but not a snake,” he said.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article6823685.ece