What's more frightening? Snakes on a plane or a two-metre long python on ice?
That's what NSW Corrective Services had to deal with after a jungle python was seized during a drug raid.
It had absorbed methamphetamine through its skin while living in a drug lab and was showing visible signs of addiction.
The python was acting in a confused and erratic manner and behaving aggressively, a spokeswoman told AAP on Tuesday.
The python was taken to state's Corrective Services-managed wildlife centre in Windsor in Sydney's northwest for a six-week rehabilitation program.
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"It just takes time for the drug to leave the snake's system, but through our assistance we managed to calm it down after several months and bring it back to its routine feeding patterns," NSW Wildlife Care Centre's senior overseer Ian Mitchell said.
It's not just pythons on ice that get admitted into the centre. Bearded dragons and blue tongue lizards have also been seized in raids and put into rehab.
Already this year the centre has treated more than 40 snakes, 15 lizards, five turtles in need of care.
Carefully chosen minimum-security inmates from the Outer Metropolitan Multi-Purpose Correctional Centre help feed, clean and de-worm the non-venomous reptiles.
The jungle python, along with other reptiles held at the centre, must await all legal proceedings to be finalised before being re-housed using a ballot system. Possible outcomes include being sent to another animal-related organisation, or placed in the care of a person with a reptile licence.
