ViralHogFor most of us, we thankfully don’t have to deal with snakes very often, or at all.
There are, of course, countries where snakes are more common, more aggressive and much more deadly, like Australia, along with all its other weird and wonderful wildlife.
Even there though, you’re hoping the snakes keep to themselves, way off in the outback, far enough away from civilisation so you can get some sleep.
However, when they come crashing through the ceiling and into your bedroom, here’s hoping Samuel L. Jackson, or at least a trusted snake catcher, is around to help…
Luckily for this family in – yep – Australia, a snake catcher was on hand to help rescue these fighting pythons, and put them back where they belong.
In a move reminiscent of Bruce Willis’ John McClane in Die Hard, the pair of adult male pythons fell from a ceiling duct into the family’s spare bedroom. Disappointingly, one of them was not wearing a white vest, and the other did not have a slight German accent and a goatee.
The snake catcher, who in this scenario is the equivalent of the Twinkie-eating LAPD cop, Al Powell, filmed the fight between the pythons before breaking the guys up.
Lana Field, from Snake Catchers Brisbane, states in the video:
This pair have been a bit naughty – they have pushed their way through from the ceiling and left a bit of a mess.
Lana added the snakes, who were around 5.7 feet long, were ‘small’ for the area, which is a bit scary – if these ‘small’ snakes can break through walls what damage can the big ones do?!
So why were these two males fighting? Over a girl, of course. Lana explained the males track the scent of female pythons and often battle it out to prove who’s stronger and therefore more worthy of the female’s attention.
Lana added these fights ‘can continue like this for hours until one is exhausted.’
After filming the duel, Lana caught the pythons and relocated them, presumably to continue their clash, in a bushy creek over a mile away from the house.
However, the location of the female remains unknown. She probably got bored with the insufferable display of masculinity and slithered off.
As if Australia didn’t have more than its fair share of venomous snakes, a new breed was recently found in Weipa, on the west coast of the Cape York Peninsula, by a team from the University of Queensland.
The team, led by Professor Bryan Fry, discovered a new species called the bandy-bandy snake, although they’re already under threat from mining.
Professor Fry said:
Bandy-bandies are burrowing snakes, so Freek Vonk from the Naturalis Museum and I were surprised when we found it on a concrete block by the sea, after coming in from a night of sea snake spotting.
We later discovered the snake had slithered over from a pile of bauxite rubble waiting to be loaded onto a ship.
Following an examination by student Chantelle Derez, the bandy-bandy turned out to be a new species, visually and genetically different from those found on the Australian East coast.
If you have a story you want to tell send it to UNILAD via [email protected]
Charlie Cocksedge is a journalist and sub-editor at UNILAD. He graduated from the University of Manchester with an MA in Creative Writing, where he learnt how to write in the third person, before getting his NCTJ. His work has also appeared in such places as The Guardian, PN Review and the bin.