Meadows Woman Pulls Out Meter-Long Red Bellied Black Snake From Pyjama Drawer

An Adelaide Hills woman on Wednesday was left petrified upon discovering a rare sight in her pajama drawer -- a red-bellied black snake! The slimy reptile had slithered up three levels of drawers like a ladder.

“I thought something's not right here, it felt really weird, it felt like a lizard or maybe a thick rubber hose,” said Cheryl Gilchrist, recalling how she was in for the rudest shock of her life when she hurriedly reached for her pajamas, and out emerged a snake out instead of those cozy pants! “Then I put two and two together and thought 'oh my god', it's a snake. O quickly stepped back and it moved just slightly,” she added.

Slightly over a meter long in size, the snake made its way into a private residence as a result of reportedly being flushed out of its natural habitat by recent bushfires. Snake catcher Tom Dunning was alerted of the species. Speculations are rife that the snake must’ve made its way into Gilchrist's home in Meadows— an area that’s closer to the area that was burnt in the Cherry Gardens bushfire on Sunday and Monday.

“This is my first encounter and hopefully my last,” said Gilchrist, enthusing how she’d never encountered a reptile at her place prior to this. “I think I'm lucky I did find it because otherwise who knows how long it might have still been in the house?” she added.

“Obviously, with the Cudlee Creek fires last year, we had a lot of callouts in and around the surrounding areas with animals flushed out of their natural habitat,” said Dunning, as per a report on abc.net. “We're seeing the same effect this year with the Cherry Gardens fire so obviously, with close proximity to that, it could have caused this animal to find somewhere to bunker down safely,” he added.

Dunning reportedly averred that the department was alerted of a more consistent number of snakes found each day this summer, rather than spikes, with lower than average temperatures in Adelaide.

He also suggested not leaving doors ajar, even when going out momentarily. "If you do see a snake, keep an eye on it from a safe distance and contact your local snake catcher to remove it safely," he said, while also advising residents to make sure that the seals on door jambs were tight and flyscreens didn’t have holes.