WATCH: Snake swallows possum in Gold Coast backyard
A Gold Coast man was mesmerised by the feat of a python to devour a whole possum in his backyard.
Greg Hosking, from Currumbin, filmed the very hungry snake's mealtime earlier this week, saying it took close to 45 minutes for the python to consume the marsupial.
"It was pretty exciting to watch. It's mesmerising in an alarming kind of way," he told the ABC.
Mr Hosking told the news outlet that the animal, nicknamed "Monty", had been seen around the family home before, but that it hadn't been spotted for weeks.
This time birds were making a ruckus in his yard leading him to look up.
That is when he noticed the snake at the top of the tree with its jaws around some "red fur".
It slithered down a little bit where they could get a better view, with the homeowner saying the reptile was then hanging about five metres above the ground.
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"We could almost touch him, we were keeping our distance a little bit," Mr Hosking told the ABC.
Mark "The Snake Hunter" Pelley told Yahoo7 this kind of spectacle is not uncommon.
"They can expand their jaws very wide to fit in prey larger than their body width," he said.
"Pythons have the ability to swallow prey whole."
