It’s not often that you hear a story involving a wild snake where it doesn’t manage to bite a human, and basically unheard of when it involves a child, but one young boy defied those odds…
I couldn’t think of a worse nightmare for a parent than seeing their young child running home carrying a venomous snake and seeing blood all over their face and hands. But a young mother from Brazil told news agencies of her understandable shock and terror when she witnessed this horror for herself.
It turned out that the toddler managed to kill the deadly viper with a bite while he was playing in the garden – basically a big bowl of NOPE. Mother Jaine Ferreira Figueira, 19, told G1 News that she realised her son, Lorenzo, was very quiet playing in the garden with their dog, so she went to investigate.
When she discovered Lorenzo with the snake in his mouth and blood all over her boy, she shouted for her husband Lucier de Souza, 22, and both immediately took their son to the Sao Luiz hospital, over 100 miles away from Porto Alegre – the capital of Rio Grande do Sul state.
The panicked parents somehow also managed to retrieve the snake from the toddler’s hands, put it in a bottle and brought it to the hospital for identification. The scary serpent turned out to be a jararaca, or pit viper, which inhabits much of South America. Without treatment, the snakes bite can prove fatal.
Initially, the parents thought that the dog had killed the deadly creature, but doctor Gilmar Carteri said it was probably the boy himself who killed the serpent and told G1 News:
He bit the young jararaca close to its head, which immobilized it and prevented it from biting him. The boy was very shaken up- I think it was a self-defence instinct that kicked in, or he thought it was a toy.
Child 1, Snake, 0.
