Two Pythons Weighing Nearly 40 Pounds 'Smash' Through Kitchen Ceiling

Two "very large" pythons were reported to have "smashed" through the ceiling of a home in the Queensland state of Australia.

The resident of the home, David Tait, said the snakes "smashed through the ceiling in the kitchen," according to Steven Brown, a snake catcher from Brisbane North Snake Catchers and Relocation, who spoke to Australia's 7 News.

The resident told Australia's Today show: "I'd been away from the night and came home to find most of the dining room ceiling on the table. I found one snake in the bedroom and we found one in the lounge room."

The snake catcher "received a call to Laceys Creek after [a] customer found two very large coastal carpet pythons (Morelia spilota mcdowelli) in his house when he got home," it said in a post on its official Facebook page.

"[The snakes] had come crashing through the customers ceiling in the kitchen. One snake was located next to the front door and the other in a bedroom of the old country home."

With an estimated combined weight of around 39.7 pounds (18 kilograms), the snakes were "some of the biggest and fattest" ever seen by Brown, Australia's Perth Now reported.

One of the snakes was about 9.5 feet (2.9 meters) long, while the other was around 8.2 feet (2.5 meters) long, according to Brown, 7 News reported.

Carpet snakes can grow up to 4 meters (13.1 feet) long, but are commonly found in the wild at around 3 meters (9.8 feet), Brown noted.

Both snakes were safely captured and released elsewhere but "they did have a couple of strikes at me only because they were scared," Brown said.

The two snakes, reported to be males, may have been "having a fight over a female [snake] that was somewhere nearby," Brown noted, raising the possibility of a third snake that may still be in the house, Perth Now reported.

"Mating season generally starts today [September 1], the first day of spring," said Brown, 7 News reported. "But I've been going to jobs with males in combat with females over the past month. That's due to the warm winter we had."

Coronavirus lockdowns in Australia were reported to have led to a rise in close encounters with deadly snakes reported in recent days, with the warmer weather bringing snakes out of hibernation.

"Because people are at home and they're not out and about...we've got a perfect storm where people will see more snakes," Raymond Hoser, who runs Snakebusters in Melbourne, the capital of Victoria, told the Australian Associated Press.

"If you see a snake don't go near it. Nine times out of 10 if they're in your garden they're passing through. If you get bitten, [put a] bandage on your arm, [go] straight to hospital. Without treatment you're likely to die. With treatment, you probably won't die," he noted.