“Oh dear. Stay still. There’s a 2.5-meter python on you.”
In a startling incident, an Australian woman was jolted awake in the middle of the night to find a gigantic carpet python sprawled across her chest. The snake had mysteriously slithered into her second-floor bedroom in Brisbane, Queensland.
Rachel Bloor initially mistook the heavy sensation on her stomach and chest for her dog resting atop her. However, when she reached under the covers, she felt something smooth shifting beneath her hand, and it dawned on her that it was not her canine companion.
“To my shock, I realized it wasn’t my dog,” Bloor shared with the BBC.
Even though carpet pythons are nonvenomous, they can still pose a threat to their prey through their powerful constrictions. (WTVT)
The report indicated that the 2.5-meter, or approximately 8-foot, snake had managed to intrude into her bedroom on Monday night.
Bloor said she immediately woke her husband and asked him to turn on the lights.
“He goes, ‘Oh baby. Don’t move. There is like a 2.5-meter python on you,’” she recalled.
Her first concern, Bloor said, was getting the family dogs out of the room before anything escalated.
“I thought if my Dalmatian realized that there’s a snake there, it is gonna be carnage,” she said.
After her husband removed the dogs, Bloor carefully worked her way out from beneath the covers.
Rachel Bloor calmly handled the nearly 8-foot carpet python herself instead of calling professionals in the moment. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
“I sort of side shuffled out,” she said.
Rather than calling a professional snake catcher, Bloor said she stayed calm and ushered the large reptile out of the bedroom herself through a window.
“I grabbed him,” she said, adding that the python “didn’t seem overly freaked out.”
“He sort of just wobbled in my hand,” she said.
Bloor suspects the snake entered through plantation shutters on her window and crawled onto the bed while she slept.
“It was that big that even though it had been curled up on me, part of its tail was still out the shutter,” she said.
Bloor said she just ‘sort of side-shuffled out.’ (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
The snake was identified as a carpet python, a non-venomous constrictor commonly found in Australia’s coastal regions.
Despite the frightening encounter, Bloor said she was relieved it was not another animal.
“Toads freak me out,” she said.
Snake catcher Kurt Whyte told ABC News that snake activity has increased with breeding season over and eggs beginning to hatch.
“Obviously, with this hot weather, we’re seeing plenty of them getting out and about and basking in this sun,” Whyte said.
Whyte added that while snake populations have not necessarily increased, sightings are becoming more common as housing developments expand into Australian bushland.
“They have got to find places to live, and our backyards are offering the perfect habitat,” he said.
He warned that common household features could provide easy access for snakes seeking shelter.
“Unfortunately, the gaps in our garage doors… provide the perfect entry points for a snake,” Whyte said.
