Kyle Cumming found the eggs in his back garden and put them in a takeaway container given to him by his mum. He popped them into his bedroom wardrobe where the warm surroundings incubated the baby hatchlings.
The eastern brown snake is the second most poisonous snake in the world and even a baby snake would have enough venom to kill a person.
“I was pretty shocked, particularly because I don’t like snakes,” mum Donna Sim told ABC News.
“The little boy had found some eggs in the yard about three or four weeks ago, and asked his mum if he could keep them,” Trish Prendergast of North Queensland Wildlife Care told AAP.
“So she put them in a container, and taped it up and put it in his wardrobe. She thought maybe it was a nice thing to do, to get the eggs and watch them hatch.”
“Leave nature alone. This little boy was extremely lucky he didn’t get bitten,” she warned.
“Any venomous snake, as soon as it hatches, has all the apparatus to deliver venom because the first thing they have to do is catch and kill prey – it’s a perfect replica of an adult snake,” Steve Wilson of Queensland Museum told ABC.
“You’ve got to impress on children to steer clear of any handling of any snakes or snake-like animals, not necessarily to be feared but always treated with a great deal of caution.”
The young snakes have since been released back into the wild.
Image via YouTube
