A reptile expert was called to a shop in western India earlier this month after a baby snake became caught in a glue trap.

Staff at the furniture store in Pune placed the traps hoping to catch rodents but were surprised on September 10 to find they'd snared a juvenile rat snake.

They called in Saidas Kusal who painstakingly applied coconut oil to the non-venomous reptile for around an hour to remove the glue that was covering its whole body.

Kusal later released the snake in a nearby forest.

“This snake had come to feed on a rat that was partially trapped. The prey got away somehow and the predator got stuck," Kusal said.

"Glue traps are a cruel way to get rid of rodents and should not be used,” he warned.

Fed up with the rodent menace, staff at a furniture shop in Pune in western India placed a few mouse glue traps on September 10 evening.

The next day they were horrified to find a three-feet-long baby rat snake trapped in one of them and called rescuer Saidas Kusal.

Kusal took the trapped nonvenomous snake to the terrace and painstakingly removed the glue using coconut oil, as an adhesive remover.

The six-month-old snake was plastered with glue, which had even entered its mouth. Saidas worked for nearly an hour to get rid of the glue completely.

He bagged the snake and later released it at a nearby forest.

Saidas said: “This snake had come to feed on a rat that was partially trapped. The prey got away somehow and the predator got stuck. Glue traps are a cruel way to get rid of rodents and should not be used.”