Incredible and shocking footage have emerged showing a carpet python swallowing a tennis ball and had to have it massaged out of it by a vet nurse.

The snake was found in Townsville on Monday, and vet nurse Trish Predergast said they had to X-ray the reptile to confirm the object in its stomach was indeed a tennis ball and not an unusually round tumour.

The video had been uploaded to Facebook where it went viral. The caption to the video wrote: “This snake decided to lunch on the wrong thing!”

A homeowner from Belgian Gardens noticed a 1.5 meter carpet python with a huge lump in her backyard.

The woman called a professional snake handler to take care of the python. The snake handler took the creature to the veterinary where doctors had the snake x rayed to see what the cause of the lump was.

The snake probably confused the bright tennis ball fora a frog. X rays revealed that the giant lump in the snake was caused by a tennis ball so doctors began massaging the reptile to carefully have it regurgitate the object.

“It probably smelt like food, maybe frogs,” said the homeowner.

The snake handler stated that it wasn’t uncommon to see snakes that have swallowed large objects. He said: “Maybe everyone six months we'll find ones with something strange in their stomachs, like golf balls and porcelain eggs.”

The video of the doctors extracting the tennis ball has gone viral on social media, garnering more than a 100 000 views on Facebook alone.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1diUY5WGO4[/embed]

http://www.thesportsbay.com/snake-swallows-tennis-ball-massaged-out-by-vet-nurse-for-20-minutes-video/

Courtesy: MOE

Magic word: Sneak