A pregnant, venomous eastern brown snake has been retrieved from underneath a refrigerator at a beachside home in Adelaide.

Snake catcher Rolly Burrell caught the snake in the kitchen of the home at Moana, to the relief of the shocked owners.

He told 891 ABC Adelaide the fridge made an ideal nest for the female snake.

"There's a bit of humidity down there and there's just the right sort of temperature to incubate eggs actually, so it's a very good spot for a snake," he said.

"It's probably the first one I've seen in 40 years of catching snakes, but she decided that she was going to lay them there I think."

The snake has since laid more than a dozen eggs in captivity.

A video taken by Mr Burrell shows him carefully shifting the fridge so he can pick the snake up, bare-handed.

"Oh my goodness, oh my God, he's a big one, don't let him go," the owner can be heard exclaiming in the background.

The snake catcher said it was lucky the owners had seen the snake's head pop out from under the fridge, or she could have had a problem in a few months' time when the eggs hatched.

"Usually the brown snakes will lay [their eggs] and she will leave," Mr Burrell said.

"If I were to let her go, somewhere else, she would have probably died, the eggs would have died, so we are just nursing the eggs and looking after her for a few weeks."

Mr Burrell said the snake was not aggressive.

"They don't come chasing people and bite people. If you leave them alone and have a healthy respect for them, they aren't a problem."

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