A woman in Melbourne, Australia experienced the unique thrill of finding a highly poisonous tiger snake slinking around her Christmas tree on Sunday morning. Happy holidayssssssssss!
“They’re probably in the top 10 most toxic animals on the planet. But they’re not dangerous unless you poke it with a stick or grab it by the tail, or try to kill it,” Barry Goldsmith, a professional snake catcher, told Mashable. Well then!
Fortunately Cheryl, who found the slithery interloper, already knew better. Is this sort of thing taught in Australian public schools? Probably, right?
“She didn’t panic, she just took a photo and sent it to the snake catcher, me, and 20 minutes later I had the little bugger in a bag,” Goldsmith wrote on Facebook. “She left the room, put a towel down as a door jam and came and rang me,” he elaborated for BBC. Once captured, he released the snake back into the wild.
In the event that this happens to you (and let’s face it, in 2016, it probably will), Goldsmith advises you to call an expert to come unravel the poisonous animal from your holiday decor. Why?
“Usually people cut the head off the snake, and don’t realize that its head is actually still alive for about 15 minutes … lots of people get bitten while trying to pick up the severed head of the snake.”
Nothing throws coal on the holiday spirit quite like being bit by the severed head of the highly poisonous snake you attempted to murder, only to have it murder you instead. I don’t know about you, but if I’m going to die on Christmas, I want to at least enjoy the dignity of being killed by a full snake. Is that so much to ask?
