Man finds python almost twice his size in his toilet

Sydney: An Australian man will be putting his toilet seat down in the future after discovering a python almost twice his size curled up in the bowl.

Snake wrangler Chris Peberdy was called to a house in rural Virginia near Darwin in far northern Australia after the owner, Erik Rantzau, spotted a 3-metre-long (almost 10 feet) carpet python in his toilet.

"It's not unusual to find snakes of that size in the tropics but you don't find usually them in toilets," Peberdy told Reuters.

"He must have come up through a drain. He was cruising around the house at night and returning to the toilet by day."

Peberdy, who runs Darwin-based snake handling company Snake NT, said the owner lives on a rural property where snakes are respected, so he left the python alone and used a different bathroom until it could be safely removed.

It took the snake wrangler four trips out to the house to catch the carpet python, which is non-venomous and kills its prey by constriction.

"He was so tightly curled into the pipes that I could not move him but eventually he popped out far enough for me to catch him," said Peberdy who is called out to catch up to 1,000 snakes a year.

The captured snake was released into the bush about 2.5 kms (1.5 miles) from the house.

Peberdy had some advice for people living in that area: "Keep the toilet seat down and look before you sit!"