A snake catcher captured the moment a massive carpet python swallowed an entire duck in Australia. Stuart McKenzie, from Sunshine Coast Snake Catchers, uploaded the image to its Facebook page.

McKenzie said he was called out to a house in the town of Caloundra, south of the Sunshine Coast, where a hungry reptile devoured the bird.

“It physically restrains it, squeezes the animal, and every time it breathes out it squeezes harder until it’s dead,” McKenzie captioned the photo on Facebook. “This is one of the largest pythons I have ever seen and would have been around the 3-meter [approximately 10-foot] mark and the duck was the size of a full-grown cat and he ate it easily!”

Raising concerns, McKenzie urged people to snake-proof their pets’ enclosures, since such pythons can eat cats, dogs, and other types of pets, including chickens.

"Nearly every week in spring we see one (snake) break into a chicken coup and eat a bunch of chickens - its almost a daily occurrence," McKenzie wrote.

The nauseating image received comments from several Facebook users, some of who expressed their fear and sadness over the incident.

“I’d crap myself If I came across something that size,” one user wrote. Another replied, “Nature can be so sad at times.” "It's amazing how wide they can stretch those jaws to eat something so big," a third wrote.

In June, a kayaker in Australia captured photos of a massive python swallowing an entire crocodile at a swamp. The GG Wildlife Rescue in Australia shared the photos of an olive python devouring the freshwater crocodile many times his size.

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This representational image shows a python on a tree inside his enclosure at the Dhupguri snake park in India, Feb. 8, 2006. REUTERS/Rupak De Chowdhuri