Three Year Old Barely Escapes Deadly Mistake

Posted: Dec 12 2011

SYDNEY – Kyle Cummings is your typical 3 year old, anything he sees that he finds interesting, he picks up and takes it home.

But on one fateful day, Kyle picked up a set of eggs of which the content more than likely would have killed him had he been exposed to it.

Eastern brown baby snakes. The 2nd deadliest venomous snake in the world. Photo Credit: Trish Prendergast.

Turns out the eggs Kyle brought home and placed in a plastic container and hid in his bedroom closet, weren’t just any ‘old’ eggs but those belonging to the 2nd deadliest snakes in the world: a eastern brown snake.

Imagine the mother’s surprise (and reaction no doubt) when she opened her son’s closet on Monday and found seven baby eastern brown snakes slithering around in the plastic box. Luckily for her, Kyle had closed the container with a lid too tight for the baby snakes to push it open.

Kyle’s family rushed the container with snakes in it to the Billabong Sanctuary where rangers handed over the ‘deadly content’ to wildlife caretakers, who were shocked with the package.

Ms Trish Prendergast contacted the Cummings family immediately, making sure no one had touched the creepy crawlers.

“They are born highly venomous,” said Prendergast.

Prendergast wanted to make sure that Kyle or anyone else had not touched the baby snakes; even though their teeth were still too small to penetrate the skin, they would have shed venom.

A cut on the hand or fingers or putting the hand against the lips or the fingers in the mouth would all it would have taken for that person to expire.

Ms Prendergast said Kyle was extremely fortunate he wasn’t confronted by the mother snake when he picked up the eggs saying eastern brown mother snakes are usually nearby their nest because they incubate their eggs and they become aggressive when confronted.

Prendergast released the baby snakes into the Australian bush and warned others never to pickup anything from a nest:

“You just don’t know what you might get!,” she said.

Contribution: Marissa Calligeros