A MOTHER possum has come away a winner in an epic showdown with a carpet python to save her young.

Queensland woman Christine Williams was arriving home from work late one Thursday night in 2015 when she heard the commotion in her backyard.

“I looked up and watched as a carpet python had just taken a baby possum from the back of its mother,” she told the ABC.

“I grabbed my camera and started taking photos.”

Despite the pictures being taken three years ago, the photos have gone viral after being shared on Facebook on Thursday by a local snake catcher on the Sunshine Coast.

“The carpet python snatched the baby possum off the mum’s back and then, as every mum would, she attacked the snake to get her baby back,” the post said.

The pictures captured by Ms Williams show the mother possum scratching, biting and clawing the snake in a bid to free her baby.

The snake ended up letting go and the lucky baby was eventually returned back to its mum’s back who made a quick getaway.

On social media, opinion was divided about whether Ms Williams should have intervened to help the mother possum.

“I wouldn’t be taking the photo but actually saving the baby,” wrote one Facebook user.

But plenty of commentators were content to point out that it was just nature taking its course.

“As hard as this would be to watch … this is all a part of nature,” snake catcher Stu McKenzie wrote.

“Would I interfere and save the baby if I was there at the time? Hard to say. In one hand it would be horrible to watch, on the other hand the snake has earnt his meal.”

But Ms Williams said she did not even think of intervening.

“I was more fascinated with the battle,” she said.