Family's angry find in lounge room skylight: 'I'd sell my house'

An Aussie snake catcher has captured the moment two angry male pythons were caught in a vicious brawl in a skylight, before they were released and carried on fighting on a family’s lounge room carpet. It comes as snakes reemerge following the colder months and mating season begins.

Josh Castle, from Sunshine Coast Snake Catchers, said he arrived to a call out at a home in Dakabin, Queensland, to find the reptiles trapped in a light fitting which he unscrewed from the ceiling, causing them to drop down onto him. Dramatic footage of the pair intertwined while attempting to attack each other as they fought over a female snake was shared on the company’s social media feed.

“They were caught in the skylight fixture so I untwisted that and they pretty much fell on me as I pulled it out,” Castle told Yahoo News Australia.

“It happens a bit. They would have used the down pipe to climb into the roof more than likely. They were battling it out for about 15 minutes while I was there. I released them back into the backyard and they continued to fight.”

He eventually separated the two coastal carpet pythons, which are not venomous but each have about 80 teeth meaning a bite would be “quite painful” and dangerous to small animals such as guinea pigs or rats.

Castle, who has been catching snakes for eight years, said the non-territorial pythons were previously “chilling in the backyard” but had come to blows because mating season is underway. It lasts from August to the end of November.

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“The two males were fighting over a female scent they could smell nearby,” he said. “It’s the time of year. The average person is not going to run into it all the time but we see it every year.”

Snakes are looking for food and females, says catcher

Castle said this was a busy season for snake catchers and he was currently receiving 10 calls a day.

“They come out of brumation and are looking for food as well as females,” he added. “They can congregate together quite comfortably.

“I’ve done jobs where I’ve found six together. They are not as territorial as a lot of people think they are.”

In comments posted on the footage, one person wrote, “No way would I be videoing, I would be outta there”, while another said, “I’d sell my house.”

“Take it outside guys!” someone else said. “She’s very likely to have a headache anyway,” a fourth joked. However, others pointed out the carpet pythons were not dangerous to humans although a bite could hurt small animals including cats.

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