By ANEEKA SIMONIS
Young reptile hunter says it wasn’t the snake’s fault…
A 10-YEAR-OLD Gembrook boy who was put under 24 hour hospital care after being bitten by a highly venomous snake last week said he was more concerned about the snake’s wellbeing than his own.
Blake Osborne, who has been described by his father as “reptile nut”, discovered a tiger snake under a paver at his pop’s Nar Nar Goon home.
But despite his best efforts to protect the creature he loves most, Blake felt the bite of the snake’s sharp fangs.
“I was trying to catch blue tongue lizards… I have caught a few before. I went to the pool house and saw a little tail and went over there and it hissed,” he recalled of the expedition gone wrong on Friday 16 January.
“I lifted the tile and saw it was a tiger snake. I put the tile down slowly… I didn’t want to drop it or anything… and then it bit my left ring finger.”
Blake’s father Cal said his son, who can rattle off endless facts about any type of reptile, calmly walked over to him to tell him about the bite – a strategic move learnt by his endless research about snakes.
“He was so calm. He said he didn’t run because that gets the heart rate up which can make the venom travel faster… he knows everything,” Cal said.
Blake’s dad, who used a black garbage bag as a compression bandage, said it was Blake who was reassuring his worried family as they drove to Casey Hospital where the anti-venom was on-hand.
“It wasn’t a mad panic to the hospital because he was so calm.
“He was reassuring us and just rattling off statistics about tiger snakes on the ride over,” Blake’s dad laughed.
“The hospital did a venom detection test and confirmed it was a tiger snake.
“Blake was pretty impressed with that.
“They had the anti-venom ready to go but we had to wait for the symptoms to appear before using it before it knocks you about a bit,” he said. ?????
Blake was kept under observation overnight but never fell ill from the meter long adult snake’s neurotoxic venom.
“The needle was worse than the snake bite,” Blake said.
Cal said his son’s love for reptiles has not been deminished by the backyard bite.
“He is 100 per cent unchanged. He is an absolute reptile lover.
“He said he will be more careful when looking in the garden but said it wasn’t the snakes fault.
“He didn’t want anyone harming the snake” Cal said of his son who currently owns four blue tongue lizards.
Blake said he may grow up to become a “reptile remover” in the future.
