Grandma solves python problem

BRISBANE – There was no question that what Jackson Wright and his father had spotted in their backyard Sunday was a snake.

Wright had watched as it slithered along a wall, then up the side of a large barbecue grill on their patio. The snake – a python, to be exact – then slipped through a gap in the grill and disappeared under its oversize black lid.

Fortunately, the pair knew just who to call for help: 81-year-old Faye Morgan, better known to Wright as “Ga,” or “Grandma.”

Technically, she was his brother’s wife’s grandmother, but the most important tie binding her to the family in that moment was that she had once wrangled a snake from that very same backyard, less than two years before.

On Monday, Morgan arrived at Wright’s home in Brisbane, Australia, wearing a pink shirt, gray sweatpants and tennis shoes. She walked over to the grill and lifted the cover.

Wright’s father stood guard on the left, clutching the clear lid to a plastic tub that would hold the snake as it emerged. Wright began filming.

“Dad told me to get the camera,” Wright told The Washington Post. “It’s not often a grandma battles a snake over a barbecue.”

Grandma appeared to take a moment to try to identify where the snake’s head and tail were. Wright’s father kept a safe distance to the side, in a sort of half-crouched stance. (“He didn’t do much,” Wright said jokingly.)

At last, Morgan grabbed two ends of the snake and hoisted it up and off the grill, shoving it quickly into the plastic bin on the ground. Wright’s father slammed the lid closed.

To their surprise, what they had thought had been one long snake on the grill had actually been two snakes. They quickly realized that the other python remained loose, resting atop the barbecue.

“You’re kidding me!” Morgan said.

She then returned to the grill and deftly removed the second snake, just as she had the first. Into the same plastic tub it went. “Perfect!” Wright’s father shouted. “Two of them!” Morgan exclaimed, laughing.

According to Wright, the python wrangling was all in a day’s work for Morgan, who lives on a farm about 20 minutes away from Brisbane and has handled snakes in the past.

“She’s done it before. She just came straight over and was very careful about what she was doing,” he said. “She was just saying: ‘Oh yeah, I’m not scared of them. Everyone’s got to be brave about it.’ She was great.”

Wright said snake sightings are not unusual, even in their residential neighborhood in Brisbane, though they’re typically much smaller.

“Every snake season here we get about two or three, usually really small ones just on the road,” Wright said. “Nothing usually on the house.”

The pythons in Wright’s barbecue appeared to be about two metres long each, and skinny enough for Morgan to have completely closed her hands around their heads and tails. However, some giant pythons in other parts of the world can grow to more than seven metres long, and have been known to swallow adult humans whole.

Meanwhile, professional snake handlers in Australia warned other residents to leave their grandmothers – and themselves – out of it if they spot snakes on their property.

“Leave the snake alone and it should hopefully move away by itself,” professional snake handler Stuart McKenzie told 7 News. “If (a snake is) in a backyard, take your pets and kids away and always maintain a safe distance from the snake.”

It’s not often a grandma battles a snake over a barbecue.

— Jackson Wright