Photo: An eastern brown snake found under a fridge of an Adelaide home went on to lay about 14 eggs after being captured. (Facebook: Snake Catchers Adelaide)
A pregnant, venomous eastern brown snake has been retrieved from underneath a refrigerator at a beachside home in Adelaide.
He told 891 ABC Adelaide the fridge made an ideal nest for the female snake.
"There's a bit of humidity down there and there's just the right sort of temperature to incubate eggs actually, so it's a very good spot for a snake," he said.
"It's probably the first one I've seen in 40 years of catching snakes, but she decided that she was going to lay them there I think."
The snake has since laid more than a dozen eggs in captivity.
A video taken by Mr Burrell shows him carefully shifting the fridge so he can pick the snake up, bare-handed.
The snake catcher said it was lucky the owners had seen the snake's head pop out from under the fridge, or she could have had a problem in a few months' time when the eggs hatched.
"Usually the brown snakes will lay [their eggs] and she will leave," Mr Burrell said.
"If I were to let her go, somewhere else, she would have probably died, the eggs would have died, so we are just nursing the eggs and looking after her for a few weeks."
Mr Burrell said the snake was not aggressive.
"They don't come chasing people and bite people. If you leave them alone and have a healthy respect for them, they aren't a problem."
By Tom Fedorowytsch
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