‘Spot the snake!’ Reptile’s sneaky hiding place leaves Aussies stumped

One sneaky snake has left Aussies stumped, as it hid in plain sight in a Queensland resident’s backyard.

Snake Catchers Brisbane & Gold Coast took to social media last month with one of their “spot the snake” games, after startled homeowners discovered the snake lurking about outside.

In the post, the snake catcher uploaded a snap of the backyard, showing a comfy-looking couch, a tall pot plant and a rock retaining wall and asked followers to guess where the snake was hiding. “Spot the snake!” they captioned the post.

The post received a number of comments from curious group members, who tried their best to spot the snake.

“Rock retaining wall would be the first place to start,” one commenter said. “If I had known this years ago I would never have built ours.”

Another questioned whether the snake was hiding in the crack in the retaining wall, behind the blue pot. While a third guessed, “Top row, in between the second and last brick on the right?”

In a follow-up post, the snake catcher gave a bit more detail and shared a close-up image of the snake’s hiding spot. It may take a bit of squinting, but the reptile can be seen poking its head out of the crack in the top row of the retaining wall, in between the second and last rock on the right.

“Quite a few of you got this one right, so well done, it was definitely another tricky one,” they wrote. “It’s a highly venomous eastern brown snake in the retaining wall!

“We snake catchers really aren’t fans of these types of retaining walls. There are so many spaces the snakes can hide in. It’s a great place to look for food (such as rodents and skinks) and, in some cases, snakes will use these retaining walls as sites for egg deposition.”

It comes just a few days after a massive python, estimated to be about 2.5 metres long, was spotted by a Brisbane homeowner coiled around a tree in his backyard. The concerned man, Jason Davies, took to Facebook on Wednesday to share his discovery, with the caption, “Great… So now we have giant snakes enjoying our hospitality.”

Facebook users were equally shocked by the size, with one commenting, “That’s a ripper buddy.” Another added, “Wow he’s a huge one. [At] least he’s not a venomous one.”