2.5m python at rental with 18mnth old kid

[vampstorso]

They are a completely harmless snake, and it is much more beneficial to have it there then to move it on.
Pythons are a placid, slow moving animal and easily handled by someone who knows snakes.
Around your house, pythons don't destroy property, don't spread disease, and don't make noise. All they want to do is eat our rats and mice.
If you move the snake on, the rats will boom and quickly spread out, spreading their scent which will attract more snakes in, and they could just as easily be highly venomous ones. Pythons live in a world of smell. Humans don't smell like rodents, so they are not interested in us.They fear us and even your toddler is way to big an animal for a python to see as a food source, it see's larger animals as a threat. BUT,.. even wild pythons can become used to human presence IF they are left alone and not disturbed by us. Case in point- we had a 9ft diamond here at the start of winter, it was coming in and out of the roof, one day on the balcony next day the roof, it spent two days trying to get comfortable in the down pipe spreader, in short I could tell it was out of sorts for some reason so I put one of my breeding boxes out on the deck picked her up and showed her the entry. She went in no problem and lived in it all winter, coming out to sunbake next to my wife and it was not unusual to see them both out there basking and its not a large deck. The two of them just left the other alone, and did their own thing, with the snake having her spring shed a week or two ago and now she's gone off feeding. We need to educate the public on the differences in snake species and that pythons in particular are very good to have around.

Lovely to see you reply Graham!
Sounds like the diamond was lucky to have you

 

[Buckey]

Having a residential snake is great. When we lived at our last house next to the bush we had green tree snakes everywhere. One large 2m snake lived in a wall cavity of our house, being the wall cavity of the nursery where we had our baby twins who at the time had just come home from hospital. Our twins were then 7 week preme so I did give that a lot of thought...having a 2m snake living a few feet away from our kids with only a wall between. Our twins are 14 now so they survived. It was funny, we had lived in the house a couple of years and not seen a snake but after we discovered "GT" and started looking out for snakes we would see them everyday sometimes 3 or 4 at a time, in the bushes, or trees or going across the pagoda into the roof or cavities.

I would just be teaching your son to respect and keep his distance from a snake as next time, as you live near to a creek it could be a venomous snake.

Question, I have seen a large brown snake eat a diamond and a large black eat a eastern brown so would a large diamond eat a smaller snake, I suppose so, so I would definitely leave your diamond alone.

 

[Yellowtail]

Not aware of any reports of Diamonds feeding on snakes. Serious reptile feeders are Red bellied blacks, King browns and Black headed pythons but others are known to do it.