An Auckland man was planning a dip in his spa pool when he discovered a snake had taken up residence.
At first he thought it was a fake - but it seems the slippery flatmate had been there for quite a while.
Dominic Guzzo was about to refill the spa pool last week when something caught his eye.
"I thought, 'Oh, it looks like a snake'. And then I thought, 'Oh, maybe the flatmates threw out a rubber plastic snake'," he said.
But on closer inspection, it was a half-metre-long dried-up dead snake.
"And when I looked closely and I saw this rib cage detail I thought, 'That's not a fake one,," Guzzo said. "It could have been there for a few weeks."
Biosecurity New Zealand was alerted and sent out a snake contractor to retrieve the remains.
It said its investigation is ongoing but knows the snake was non-venomous and a tropical snake and unlikely to survive here. Due to the condition of the remains, the exact species has not been determined.
It wasn't a sea snake - like the venomous one that scared West Coast swimmers in December.
And Guzzo lives kilometres from the coast so he has no idea where his companion came from.
His recent find doesn't worry him too much, he still enjoys a dip although he does now look twice.
"I mean, it's disconcerting. And sometimes when I walk past. Go inside. I look to see if there's another snake there," he said.
Just in case the warm water attracts another friend from the tropics.
