When a woman in Australia entered a shed on her property last month, she noticed a thick cord blocking her toaster oven door. Brown and scaly, she watched as the cord moved.
A snake had wrapped himself around her toaster oven.
Five Freedoms Animal Rescue
Familiar with the wildlife living on her property, the woman recognized the intruder as an eastern brown snake.
Eastern brown snakes are common in Australia, says the Australian Museum. They’re also the second most venomous snake in the world and strike quickly when threatened.
Getty Images/Ken Griffiths
Initially, the woman gave the snake plenty of distance as she thought he was simply touring her shed. But the snake hung around long enough that she wondered if he was hurt.
Then she realized his tail was caught in the building’s rusty metal frame.
Five Freedoms Animal Rescue
The woman called Manfred Zabinskas, owner and operator of Five Freedoms Animal Rescue.
“[She] was calm and sounded like she truly cared about the snake’s welfare,” Zabinskas told The Dodo. “She felt the snake was in trouble.”
Looking at photos he received from the woman, Zabinskas worried the snake had seriously injured himself.
Zabinskas drove an hour to the property and arrived to find a terrified snake supporting himself on objects near the shed frame, desperate to free his tail.
Five Freedoms Animal Rescue
“Being a large snake, it was able to wrap completely around the oven and hide its head behind the oven,” Zabinskas said. “Eastern brown snakes … are known for their speed and reactivity to danger. This snake was so scared, and must have felt so vulnerable, that it focused on escape rather than attack. That’s not typical behavior for this species.”
Zabinskas carefully lifted part of the snake’s body to relieve some of the tension the animal created wrapping himself around the oven.
“Because of its size, I was able to work on its tail knowing its head was a safe distance away,” he said. “Of course, I monitored the snake’s movements and tension in its body to know if it decided to come toward me.”
Five Freedoms Animal Rescue
Remarkably, Zabinskas lifted the snake’s tail out of the rusty frame easily. Concerned about injuries, he carefully examined the area that had been trapped.
“I was very surprised at how minor the injury to its tail was,” Zabinskas said. “The skin wasn’t broken, there was no blood and its spine appeared to be intact.”
The woman then surprised Zabinskas by telling him she wanted the poisonous snake released back onto her property.
“[She] wanted her resident snake to remain on her property, where it shared the land with her and her dog, and where it belonged,” Zabinskas said. “They had been living in harmony so far.”
Five Freedoms Animal Rescue
The two of them watched the snake slither back under a pile of rocks, presumably into the home he’d missed for the several hours he’d been trapped in the shed.
“[She] was a truly compassionate animal lover,” Five Freedoms Animal Rescue wrote in a Facebook post about the rescue, “in tune with nature and her environment.”
Getty Images/Ken Griffiths
Hopefully, this snake will remember his narrow escape from the shed frame and stick to his outdoor territory from here on out.
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