South West Victorian resident Ricky Owens says he will think twice when picking up shopping bags in his kitchen after a surprise encounter with a one-metre-long venomous tiger snake.
Mr Owens says he left the internal door to his Dartmoor home open when he went out, and suspects the reptile slithered through a gap in his flyscreen door.
"I'd been out of the house for a couple of hours," Mr Owens said.
"When I came back, I just sat down and noticed my old cat Gordon was banging around one of the lounge chairs, hissing and scratching and then jumping back."
Mr Owens lifted the lounge chair but did not find anything and thought "no more of it" before heading to the pub.
When he returned home, Gordon continued to act out of character.
"I was getting some tea out of the fridge and the cat was again scratching among a couple of shopping bags I had sitting beside the fridge," he said.
Mr Owens said he picked up the shopping bags.
Mr Owens said the snake tried to hide underneath the fridge.
"All I had was about six inches of the belly of [the snake] hanging out from under the fridge," he said.
Mr Owens said he pulled the snake out from underneath the fridge and threw it over his back fence.
While joking about the incident, he said there were some serious lessons to be learnt.
"If my cat hadn't played up … I'd be none the wiser.
"Just imagine you're a little kid who wants to reach into those bags and go, 'What's this thing?' Anything can happen."
Snake catcher predicts busy summer
Mount Gambier snake catcher and educator David Miles said it was not unusual to find snakes in homes and warned people not to leave their doors open.
"I have been called out to a house at Kongorong where a snake was in a bedroom," Mr Miles said.
Mr Miles — who survived a tiger snake bite late last year — said snakes searched for water or cool spots during warm days.
"I have heard of snakes doing laps of houses to try and get in," Mr Miles said.
He said if a snake is detected inside a home, it was important to try to contain it to one area so it could be located.
"People can put tape along a bottom of a door or even stuff towels there to stop snakes moving," Mr Miles said.
He warned the warmer weather would trigger a rise in snake sightings across the region.
Mr Miles said he recently removed a venomous copperhead from a Mount Gambier motel.
"I think it is going to be a full-on year for snakes. But we must remember they are part of nature, and we have to put up with them," he said.
