Hiding…garden visitors

We had a visitor to our garden last week – can you see what it is?

…Maybe a little closer is needed…

This lovely Carpet Python Morelia spilota was quietly curled up in amongst the leaf litter in one of our gardens – it must have felt us and decided to take a look at who/what was disturbing its sleep. They are non venomous snakes and generally not aggressive. They squeeze their prey and then swallow them in one large gulp.

We left it in peace to get on with its business. Carpet pythons are often around houses with many taking up residence in house roofs and taking care of local vermin – like rats, mice. I am wondering whether our little local plump mouse I found in our pantry this morning is because our very useful carpet python may have moved out for a while.

A few months ago my dad who is local ‘snake wrangler’ in his neighbourhood – being a country farm boy until he left to get a job in the city where I grew up this is second nature to him. He often relocates snakes – here is one of the local carpet pythons he captured from a yard with a small puppy who may have been a very tasty snack for this python, he moved it to another part of the area. It did come back though and had to be recaptured and moved further away – it hasn’t come back.