THE AUSTRALIAN (Sydney) 29 November 06 A snake could eat your pet – expert (Jessica Marszalek)
Missing your pet pussycat? Well it could be slithering away in the belly of a snake, according to wildlife experts.
Queensland Museum curator of reptiles Patrick Couper today said pythons were capable of eating animals the size of a wallaby and regularly fed on people's pets around Australia.
Mr Couper was speaking after a woman in Rockhampton, on Queensland's central coast, watched in horror as her cat was devoured by a two metre coastal carpet python.
But although many pet owners would be shocked at the snake's choice of lunch, Mr Couper said snakes regularly ate pet chickens, budgies and were certainly capable of eating small dogs and cats.
"Carpet snakes are a reasonably common element of suburban gardens and encounters between snakes and cats are probably relatively common,'' he said.
"You often hear of missing cats.
"Now I would think that in certain cases you could attribute that to maybe the cat had been taken by a python ... but these things would happen largely at night and the cat would just be put down as missing.''
He said he had heard of some cats that "freak out'' at the sight of garden hoses and believed this could be because of the cat's residual fear of snakes.
Mr Couper said pet birds were also a favourite for snakes.
"The snake gets through the bars, eats the bird and with that extra lump in its stomach can't get out,'' he said.
"So a horrified pet owner comes out in the morning and finds a brown tree snake with a bulge in its stomach sitting in the cage.''
Rockhampton Zoo reptile keeper Wil Kemp was called to catch the cat-loving snake from the woman's backyard on Friday and is caring for it at the zoo while it digests its prey.
"He still has a really big lump in his belly,'' Mr Kemp said today.
''(But) he's pretty happy for a snake that's eaten a cat.''
A snake could eat your pet