Melbourne girl finds tiger snake in toy box

A YOUNG girl playing in a Preston backyard came face-to-face with one of the world’s most venomous snakes, before the slippery critter was captured. See how it was caught.

A SEARCH for a toy brought a young girl face-to-face with a tiger snake in her Preston backyard.

The slippery stowaway was coiled at the bottom of a wooden box and was almost mistaken for a toy by eight-year-old Ruby.

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Her father Dave Hall said Ruby was leaning over the box a few centimetres from one of the most venomous snakes in the world.

“She said to me ‘I didn’t realise we had a toy snake’ then she saw its tongue come out and she screamed,” he said.

“I went over thinking it would maybe be a lizard and I looked in and just thought ‘sh-t’.”

He said he hid the children inside and took refuge from a safe vantage point on top of the trampoline waiting for the snake catcher to arrive.

The Snake Hunter Mark Pelley with the snake in a plastic container. Ashley, 4 and Ruby, 8 are with mum Adie Tudor.

The snake will be released into the wild, far away from homes.

The shock discovery on Thursday afternoon came after he, Ruby and youngest son Ashley, 4, had all been rifling through the box grabbing toys.

“We literally reach into that box every day,” he said.

“The luckiest thing was Ruby said afterwards ‘I didn’t feel like playing with a toy snake.”

Mark Pelley, known as the Snake Hunter, said the snake lunged at him twice before he captured it by the tail.

He said the venomous snake could have easily interpreted a hand digging through the box as a threat.

“The child would have had very little chance (if she was bitten),” he said.

“Death could have occurred in minutes.”

Mr Pelley said snake sightings were ramping up across suburban Melbourne in recent weeks, with spring and summer the busiest periods.

His advice to anyone who finds a snake was to slowly back away from it.