A steel-toothed carpet python put on a spectacular display for a Queensland family as it gently devoured a possum. Something about the commotion the birds were making in the tree made Peter McMaster put down his lawnmower and look up.

“There was a loud noise and I thought, ‘I guess it’s a snake,’” he explained. He couldn’t believe his eyes as he looked up: “There it was, a possum hanging from the tree, on the end of a snake.”

Mr McMaster’s initial action was to summon his children to come and see the magnificent scene unfolding in his garden in Tingalpa, south of Brisbane. “It was just incredible to behold, especially for the young ones,” he told news.com.au.

McMaster said the predator was one of four or five carpeted pythons he had seen in the past month around his family’s farm. “We found one a few weeks ago that had semi-constrained a flying fox,” he explained. “I’d like to think it’s the same one that got the possum, but we can’t be sure.”

McMaster said his family had recently returned from a holiday when they saw the incredible spectacle on Sunday, thinking the snake had become bolder during their absence. “We don’t have a name yet, but after today, I think it deserves one. I’ll let the youngsters come up with one.” It’s not the first time Australia has taken the world by storm with footage of bizarre wildlife interactions.

A video of a massive hunter stuffing a mouse into a refrigerator in central Queensland went viral last year, and earlier this month residents of Margaret River, Western Australia, were alarmed to see a body-building kangaroo flexing its muscular biceps in a nearby creek.