A CHILD who woke up to go to the loo has almost needed a change of underwear after lifting the toilet seat to find a metre-long snake curled up in the ceramic bowl. Scroll down to watch the video!
WATCH: Be Sure To Check Under Your Toilet Seat For Spiders … And SNAKES!
The brown tree snake had slithered into the family’s Guanaba home in the Gold Coast hinterland and somehow managed to find its way into the bathroom and into the toilet.
Gold Coast reptile wrangler Tony Harrison was called out to catch the slippery serpent on Sunday morning.
Tony said one of the children was “weeing” when they spotted something moving under the lip of the toilet bowl.
Like most of his call outs, Tony filmed the catch on his mobile phone and broadcast it live to Facebook.
With his bare hand, Tony reached into the toilet and started feeling around for the snake, sliding his fingers up and under the edge of the ceramic bowl.
PHOTO: Tony Harrison / Gold Coast and Brisbane Snake Catcher
Once he locates and grabs hold of the snake, it takes only a few flushes of water and a good tug here and there to pull the entire metre-long reptile out of the unusual hiding spot. See the video below.
“Can you imagine waking up early in the morning, sitting on the toilet and then this [the snake] popping up between your legs?” Tony said.
PHOTO: Tony Harrison / Gold Coast and Brisbane Snake Catcher
PHOTO: Tony Harrison / Gold Coast and Brisbane Snake Catcher
Brown tree snakes are venomous but harmless to humans.
They belong to the colubrid family which includes the majority of harmless snake species, but the few venomous types that do exist, such as the brown tree snake, have grooved fangs in the back of their jaw.
Their venom is weak and is only delivered in small doses, primarily to subdue prey such as lizards.
“He [the snake] wouldn’t have come up through the toilet, he would have come into the house and then crawled into there [the toilet] to hide.”
PHOTO: Tony Harrison / Gold Coast and Brisbane Snake Catcher
For most people, the sight of a snake in their house would be enough to make them hurl, but for professional snake catcher Tony, it was more the contents of the toilet bowl that had him “dry reaching”.
“My phobia is poo,” Tony said. “So uncomfortable it was … I nearly washed my hands off my arms … I dry reached the whole time.”
Tony said it was hard to tell just how long the snake had been hiding under the seat.
It’s not the first time he’s been dispatched to pluck a snake out from under the lip of a ceramic toilet bowl.
Tony told myGC that he has pulled as many as 10 snakes out of household toilets before, some “ten times” the size of the one caught at Guanaba on Sunday.
At 5am Natasha had a headache. By 10am, she couldn’t walk.
She Had An Ugly Wound On The Side Of Her Head And No One Knew What It Was
At first, she just had a headache, but it didn’t take long for Natasha’s symptoms to spiral into something terrifying. And to make matters more frightening, doctors had no idea what was wrong.
It started at 5am, when Natasha woke her mum, Natalie Renee, complaining of a headache. Her condition deteriorated quickly. Later that morning the girl had a fever of 40 degrees and had lost the ability to walk.
Natalie, who has been a nurse based in the US for 13 years, had never seen anything like it. She checked over her daughter’s body and found a lump at her hairline, the size of a 20 cent piece.
“I checked her head because she kept complaining,” Natalie posted on Facebook. “I found a quarter size lump on the right side of her head that by 4pm had become the ugliest looking wound I have ever seen.”
It’s just a spider bite … or so they thought
The pair visited a doctor and were told that it was a spider bite. They went home, but in a few more hours, the spot had turned white with a red border.
“The fever was unstoppable,” Natalie wrote. “She screamed in pain nonstop because she was unable to move her head/neck or even walk.
“She was dizzy, confused and her knees were swollen and painful.”
“I never saw anything like this in 13 years of nursing”
Natalie drove her daughter to a local children’s hospital. “[I was] a mess, scared to death because I never saw anything like this in 13 years of nursing.”
Doctors in hospital reassured her that they would figure out the problem, but everyone who examined Natasha was baffled by her symptoms.
“Every team from neurologists, infectious disease, dermatology, and who knows what else saw her,” Natalie wrote. “Everyone scratched their heads just like me.”
A photo of the wound was passed around.
“I think between the pics and telling the same story over and over and about 30 physical exams we both were frustrated.”
All the while Natasha was getting worse.
A diagnosis at last
Doctors determined that while the wound wasn’t the usual presentation of a tick bite, Natasha had Lyme disease.
“She got her first dose of cefuroxime last night and thank god this morning is the first time in days I saw her walk by herself, eat, drink and is talking my ear off again about everything,” she wrote.
“I am so thankful we came to the right place.”
Lyme disease
“Lyme disease is a tick-borne infection caused by a bacteria in the Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato group,” according to NSW Health.
Symptoms include fever, headache, fatigue, sore muscles and joints and a skin rash.
NSW Health cautions that there is little evidence that the disease occurs in Australia, but there’s a risk of catching it overseas.
If children have symptom’s like Natasha’s, Natalie recommends checking the child’s skin, even if you don’t see a tick.
“[The type of Lyme disease Natasha had] attacked her nervous system,” Natalie wrote. “I just ask to please take precautions to prevent ticks with your children and yourself. I never saw a tick on Natasha, so even if you don’t see one, check their skin for bites …”
Ongoing treatment
In the six days since Natalie posted her story, she’s learned how little medical professionals know about Lyme disease. The family also has insurance worries.
“We may not have coverage for continued treatment,” she wrote, “and might have to travel hours to get a Lyme literate MD to treat her.”
In a post from earlier today, Natalie wrote, “Prayers please for my girl. We are headed back to children’s [hospital].”