Aussie woman trapped outside in 40-degree heat by 'dangerous' intruder

After a hard day working outside, Cailee had been looking forward to turning on the air conditioner and having a meal.

Cailee and her pug kneeling in front of the door of her Penrith home.
Moments before this photo was taken, Cailee had been trapped outside and unable to get to her small dog. Source: Urban Reptile Removal

An Aussie woman became trapped outside her home for over an hour as temperatures soared past 40 degrees on Tuesday. The western Sydney resident attempted to open her front door when she noticed something much more troubling than the heat lying at her feet — one of the world’s most venomous snakes.

Twenty-five-year-old Cailee, of Penrith, had been working outside since 7am as a bush regenerator. She’d been looking forward to switching on the air conditioner and having a bowl of pasta when she got home in the afternoon heat, only to find a long, brown snake greeting her.

“I’d had a weird feeling all day, that I might see a snake while I was working” she told Yahoo News. “Then as soon as I stepped onto my patio I saw him there. He looked pretty jammed under the screen door. It’s a bit flimsy and doesn’t shut properly and I think he must have got it open and become stuck.

But it wasn’t only her own welfare that concerned Cailee. She was worried about her puppy that was pacing on the other side of the door, and also the unfortunate snake caught out in the hot sun.

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The eastern brown snake caught underneath Cailee’s front door in Penrith.
The eastern brown snake became caught underneath Cailee’s front door. Source: Supplied

Keeping a safe distance, she snapped a picture that made its way to Chris Williams, a professional snake catcher who heads up Urban Reptile Removal. He instantly identified it as an eastern brown snake and raced to her home to help.

“Eastern brown snakes are an extreme danger to people,” he said before taking a meaningful pause, “If people try to catch or kill them”.

All native snake species in Australia are protected. Bites from venomous species are rare and are overwhelmingly inflicted on men when people try to take matters into their own hands.

“I think of eastern brown snakes as being more scared than a lot of snakes, and that can come across as hyper aggression. But when you've seen enough of them, you can see that they're just terrified of us,” Chris added.

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Cailee had been fretting the snake might make its way inside and encounter her frightened dog. Because there was only one way into her ground-floor flat she was unable to get inside to calm him.

But just moments before Chris arrived at Cailee’s house, the snake managed to free itself and slither away. She'd been relying on a small supply of juice she'd taken with her to work and was feeling faint by the time the encounter was over.

Still hungry and thirsty, during her interview, she was relieved to be reunited with her pug. And she was happier still that Chris had advised her the snake would have been unable to breach her front door and get inside.

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Because of the hot weather over the long weekend, Chris has been inundated with callouts to help with snakes. Anyone who encounters a snake in their yard is advised to be cautious but also sympathetic to the animal’s needs.

“Cailee did everything right. She stood back at a safe distance. And then watched it after it freed itself. By doing that, there was no anxiety that the snake was still around and was going to be a danger to the dog,” he said.

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