A friend of mine sent me this link: http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/a-python-tried-to-kill-my-son-mother-20120101-1pgxg.html – Thanks Mike 🙂

As I’m the local reptile expert, he asked me if I believed the story (we all know that the media would never lie or get anything wrong, right?).  I said yes, and made some other pithy comments on various excerpts from the story.  Here they are for your enjoyment:

Yea, I’d believe it.  My guess is that this would be a carpet python.  The largest I’ve ever heard of is 8ft (I owned one that big) but they usually top out at 6ft.  They are native to Australia, and when hungry they can be somewhat less than selective and will strike at anything warm that moves.  They aren’t really very bright.

"He just screamed only once and I just grabbed him and tried pulling the snake off but I couldn't budge it."

This is dumb – it’s not difficult to uncoil a snake.  Start at the tail and unwind it – they have very little ability to stop you doing that.  If you start at the head, that’s a different story.

Mr Tunnie grabbed the snake's head and squeezed as hard as he could before he began unwinding the python from Kye's body.

Head squeezing? Pointless.  Start at the tail – geez.

The snake then turned on Mr Tunnie and wrapped around his arm, cutting off circulation.

ROFL – oh, waaaaa – for an adult, a carpet python isn’t big or strong enough to do any appreciable damage.

Kye had to be revived twice after he passed out en route to Mossman Hospital, and later stopped breathing while being transferred to Cairns Base Hospital.

This is where education would have been very helpful.  If they had done the right thing to start with, the kid would have suffered only a bite, which goes away in less than a week.

A test for venom came back negative and X-rays revealed the snake had not crushed Kye's ribs.

Venom?  LOL! Pythons don’t have venom!  Also, constrictors do NOT break bones, even in small rats and so forth (which are much weaker than human bones).  What they do is to constrict the rib cage, then when the prey breathes out, they apply enough pressure to stop the prey from being able to breathe in again.

He was released from hospital the following day with four bite marks and bruising to his lower leg.

Yea, typical minor stuff.

However, two days later the toddler was waving goodbye to his deadly attacker as he watched a snake-catcher release the python into rainforest.

"Bye bye, Bitey," the toddler called as the snake wound itself up a tree.

I’m really glad they didn’t kill the snake (in the US, they would have, because they are usually idiots).  Kids are remarkably resilient, eh?