A 7ft-long rat snake was caught eating a toad under a family’s washing machine in Thailand.

The snake was believed to have hunted the creature that wandered into the family’s back kitchen where they do the laundry in Ang Thong province on August 13.

When resident Kamolwit Preecha, 38, was about to wash her clothes, she noticed something moving under the appliance and went to have a closer look.

The woman was shocked when she found it was a rat snake with a frog in its mouth so she rushed inside the house and called the animal rescuers for help.

Kamolwit said: ‘I thought the snake could be a deadly cobra so I immediately went back inside. It was busy eating the toad so it did not follow me.’

Upon arrival, the female snake wrangler Ratha Tapiantong saw the rat snake curled beneath the washing machine with a frog in its mouth.

She then reached under the washing machine and slowly secured the animal’s neck using her bare hands before placing it inside a sack.

Ratha said: ‘Some residents who do not have experience with snakes could mistake rat snakes to be cobras but these ones are non-venomous.’

The snake wrangler secured the snake inside a sack and then took it with them and later released the animal back into the wild.