In a startling midnight encounter, Rachel Bloor, a resident of Brisbane, Australia, found herself face-to-face with an unexpected house guest – a massive 2.5-metre carpet python curled up on her chest. The incident, which unfolded in the early hours of Monday morning, has left the couple shaken but unharmed.
Bloor, who was half-asleep at the time, initially reached out for her dog, only to come into contact with the smooth, slithering reptile instead. Alerted by his partner’s expletives, Bloor’s husband quickly turned on the bedside lamp, confirming the presence of the unwelcome intruder.
“Oh baby, don’t move. There’s like a 2.5m python on you,” Bloor’s husband warned, prompting the couple to swiftly evacuate their Dalmatian dog from the room, fearing the canine’s reaction.
Remaining remarkably calm, Bloor began carefully extricating herself from under the cover, all the while grappling with the surreal nature of the situation. “I was just trying to shimmy out from under the covers… in my mind, going, ‘Is this really happening? This is so bizarre’,” she recounted.
The carpet python, a non-venomous species common in the coastal regions of Australia, is believed to have squeezed its way through the shutters and onto Bloor’s bed below. Unfazed by the encounter, Bloor calmly guided the snake back out the way it had come, noting that even as she handled it, the python “didn’t seem overly freaked out” and “just wobbled in my hand.”
While her husband was left stunned by the unexpected visitor, Bloor’s calm demeanour stemmed from her upbringing on acreage, where she was accustomed to the presence of snakes. “I think if you’re calm, they’re calm,” she said.
However, the story might have taken a different turn had the intruder been a cane toad, one of Australia’s most notorious and unwelcome pests. “I can’t stand them, like they make me dry retch. So if it was a cane toad, it would have scared me,” Bloor admitted.
Fortunately, both the human and animal occupants of the household emerged unharmed from the late-night encounter, a testament to Bloor’s composure and the non-aggressive nature of the carpet python.