Python undergoes surgery to remove pilfered slipper from stomach

March 26 (UPI) -- An Australian veterinarian performed surgery on a carpet python that wandered into a person's home and ate one of their slippers.

Josh Llinas of Greencross Vets in Queensland said a local snake catcher brought the python into the clinic in Mount Ommaney and reported that it was suspected to have swallowed a slipper.

"A local snake catcher brought the snake into the clinic, so I don't know the ­details of the gentleman who brought it in," Llinas told the Courier-Mail newspaper. "They knew it had eaten a slipper because they saw [the snake] in the room with one slipper missing."

"You could see the outline of some foreign material in the stomach," he said.

Llinas said an X-ray confirmed the object in the snake's belly was indeed the missing slipper.

"I decided it was one that was going to come out manually," the veterinarian said. "Sometimes you can remove the foreign bodies by helping them after they've been relaxed ... by helping them move it up the digestive tract and out of the mouth."

"This was just way too big and it wasn't going to come out," he said.

Llinas and his colleagues posted a video of the "coeliotomy and gastrotomy" procedure to Facebook.

"Care was taken to minimize the risk of spillage and contamination of the surgical field and new gloves and instruments were used for closure," the Facebook post said.

Llinas said the snake will spend the next six to eight weeks recovering from the surgery.

"There was no damage that I could see," he said.