Having grown up on a farm, Kyle Andrews is no stranger to snakes or spiders.
But he never expected to find two of the most venomous varieties entangled in a web underneath a car in his shed.
Mr Andrews was tidying up at his house in Two Wells, north of Adelaide, when he made the discovery yesterday afternoon, spotting a baby eastern brown snake with a redback spider on its tail.
"I thought I'd seen a piece of electrical cable caught up and hanging underneath the car," he said.
"I went down for a bit of a closer look and reached out to grab it and then realised it was a small snake hanging from a spider's web.
"The next thing I saw, there was a redback just part-way down the tail of the snake."
With the time pressure of needing to take his daughter to a swimming lesson, Mr Andrews decided to take matters into his own hands.
"I was thinking of waiting to see if the snake could free itself and bugger off on its own but I realised it was totally stuck there," he said.
"The snake twitched a bit so I think the spider was biting it.
"I grabbed the nearest thing in the shed, which was a garden hose, and I scooped up the snake and flung it back out to where it had come from."
It is not clear if the snake survived the ordeal, but Mr Andrews took no chances with the spider.
Snake catcher Jarrad Waye said it was crucial to "always call an expert" to handle any situation involving snakes, even baby ones.
The eastern brown snake is the world's second-most venomous land snake, and babies have venom from the time they hatch.
Mr Waye, who recently removed a red-bellied black snake from Marion Shopping Centre, said it was not uncommon to see a baby brown snake at this time of year.
"Baby brown snakes are everywhere at the moment; it's that time of year where eggs are hatching," he said.
Mr Waye said it was not uncommon for a redback spider to have the upper hand in this type of situation.
He said baby eastern brown snakes were vulnerable to attacks from spiders or animals as they were left to fend for themselves after hatching.
"They [eastern brown snakes] are not maternal, so they don't sit there with their eggs," he said.
"They'll lay their eggs and they'll have anywhere from 12 to 20 eggs and out of those eggs only about one or two will make it to adult life."
Mr Andrews hopes the encounter was a freak event.
"[The shed] is tidy and clean and my little girl spends time playing in here — so a snake is not even on the radar," he said.
Lucky escape after brown snake bite
Even further north, Lyn Jacka had a lucky escape after being bitten by a brown snake yesterday.
She was heading back to her property after a walk along the Clare Riesling Trail in SA's wine region when she felt a "knock on the bottom of my leg".
"I had originally just thought I had stepped on a stick and then looked down and saw quite a large brown snake and it had drawn blood on my leg," she said.
"So I was then a little bit beside myself being at home alone."
She rang her husband, who took her to the local hospital, where she was tested for venom.
When this came back positive, she was airlifted by MedStar to the Royal Adelaide Hospital.
"They just continued to monitor me, I had to remain in hospital for a minimum of 12 hours, they regularly took bloods just to make sure everything was OK, and observations, and I was fortunate enough that I didn't need significant treatment, which was a good result."
While it was a "nerve-racking" wait to see what would happen, it seems the venom did not enter her bloodstream — something Ms Jacka feels "very, very fortunate" for.
"To be honest, [I'm] one of the lucky ones and it could have been a lot worse," she said.
Ms Jacka has lived on 13 acres of scrub for about 15 years and has rarely seen snakes in that time.
"But certainly this season there seems to be a lot more out and about than normal," she said.
She said she was a "little bit shocked" to see the snake.
"If I didn't look down and seen the snake I wouldn't have even known that I'd even come across one," she said.
"I'm normally so diligent and normally always have my eye out for snakes so [it happened] in a split second of not really concentrating and watching what I was doing."
Ms Jacka was discharged from hospital on Sunday and apart from some tiredness, said she was doing well but would be even more careful in the future.
"It's very scary how quickly and easily it can happen," she said.
