Massive snake found in family kitchen

A Queensland family has received a huge fright, after discovering a massive snake in their kitchen.

The 3.8 metre 10 kilogram scrub python was spotted by Kim Pettejohn of Kuranda in far north Queensland on Thursday morning.

Mrs Pettejohn wasted no time in calling Cairns snake catcher David Walton, who removed the reptile in a delicate operation.

"The residents of the household must have woken up and realised they've got this big in their kitchen when they were ready to make themselves some breakfast," he said.

"(Mrs Pettejohn) contacted the snake catcher and she was quite distraught at the same time, which I don't blame her.

"(The snake) was actually curled up asleep - scrub python's are nocturnal creatures so during the day he wants to find a quiet, dark place to curl up and sleep.

"He'd actually jammed himself right into the corner of a set of shelves she had with all the plates and glasses and stuff on it.

"It was quite amazing that a snake of that size could squeeze himself into such a little ball and hide in there."

Mr Walton said some scrub pythons can be quite aggressive, but this particular one was very placid.

"This one was really good... the python is calm by nature and really it's a defensive thing where the moemnt he feels threatened... that's when they become defensive and you can expect a bite.

"If you're calm and you try and keep him calm, normally you're ok but every now and then you will get one that is annoyed at the world in general and he just wants to bite everything that's within a one metre radius."

Before the monstrous python was returned to the wild, it had around 40 ticks removed from its skin.

Mrs Pettejohn said it wasn't her first encounter with the animal either.

"I recognised him from when he tried to eat my goat, so I knew he was kind of placid," she said.

The goat escaped the clutches of the python at the time. The reptile was wrapped around the animal but did not deliver a fatal blow.