I may have posted this story somewhere on the site before, but I can't find it, so here goes.
Quite a few years back I found a blue tongue lizard in the back yard that was covered in ticks. They had burrowed under his scales, and he even had some down his ear holes. I rang the local wild life rescue mob to see if they knew how to get rid of the ticks, especially the ones down his ear holes. I chatted to the nice lady at the wildlife rescue, told her where I was and what the problem was, and she said:
"Just pick the ones off the body, grasping the head with a pair of fine nose tweezers. The ones down the ear canals, drip some warm olive oil down the ears and they should die."
"OK" says I, "I'll give it a go"
Her next question was: "Can you tell the difference between lizards and snakes?"
I thought to myself, she must think I'm an idiot, if I can't tell the difference between a blue tongue and a snake. "Yes I think I'm pretty confident I can"
"Good she says, would you mind going up the road from you, to mister @%$#%. He thinks he has a snake behind the door frame in his laundry, but isn't sure. Would you have a look and let me know, because we don't have anyone here at the moment who can go"
"Yeah, I suppose I could go and have a look" I said, a tad nervously.
So I went up to old mate up the road, and he has half the door frame ripped out around his back/laundry door, with a a 15mm gap between brickwork and timber. I told him that the lady had asked me to have a look etc, and he said go for your life. I got bitten by a tiger snake in the middle of my back lawn 2 years ago, so I'm not going anywhere near it. His lawn was like a golf course green too.
I wandered up and gingerly took a peek through the gap, and saw a curved shape, black satiny sheen, with feint diamond shaped markings on it. It also had what looked like cement dust clinging too it. It definitely looked snakey, but there was something a bit strange about it. Seeing as the bit I could see, was nowhere near where the head would be, I got a bit of wire about 500mm long and gave it a gentle poke (as you do). Nothing happened, except the skin felt a bit strange. there was too much give in it. I gave it a few more jabs, just to make sure it wasn't sleeping, and still nothing happened. I got a little closer, and noticed that the skin sort of wrinkled or folded when I poked it too...
This is what the snake skin looked like, or very similar.
