IMAGINE IT, you're tired from battling COVID, and you start to make your way to bed after a long day. As you walk through your kitchen, you catch a glimpse of something in the corner of your eye.
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Then, fear takes over, as you realise it's a venomous snake.
Well, for Pauline Ashmore this was recently her reality.
During the early hours of January 30, from her South Bathurst home, she spotted a tiger snake in the middle of her home.
"It was about one o'clock in the morning and I was getting organised to go to bed and I walked out of my lounge room, and I started to walk into my dining area, and there was this thing sitting there," Ms Ashmore said.
"I didn't really know what it was at the time so I turned the light on and the next thing this snake just started rearing it's head up at me, and it scared the life out of me."
It was then that she sprang into action. With the aid of a broom, a plastic container and a hammer, she was able to successfully trap the snake.
After pushing the snake into a corner with the broom, she was then placed a container over it, and weighed it down with the aid of a hammer.
Then, she searched her home for any other slithery creatures, while on a video call with her son, who thankfully awoke to her frantic phone call.
"I said 'I've got a tiger snake in my kitchen. No joke, there is a snake in my kitchen'," Ms Ashmore said.
And though she was able to remain relatively composed, she said that the evening still rattled her.
"I stayed up until about 3:30am, I was too scared to go to bed. I stayed up because I was so nervous," she said.
Luckily for Ms Ashmore, she had booked a tradesmen to work on her home on the first day of February, and this tradesmen was able to successfully release the snake into the wild.
Ms Ashmore has lived in the South Bathurst area for around 13 years, and in that time, she said she has seen one or two snakes in the area before.
"Once or twice there has been one in the backyard, but I don't see them very often," she said.
And she has never before seen one in her home, and she hopes that she never will again.
"The other night was the closest I have ever been to a snake, and I never want to get any closer," Ms Ashmore said.
To make sure that it never happens again, Ms Ashmore said that she would buy some solar snake repellers to place around her home.
