A man from Australia died after being bitten by a very poisonous snake while trying to get the snake out of a childcare center “to keep the kids safe,” according to local news outlets and emergency services on Wednesday.
Responding paramedics in Queensland, Australia’s northeastern state, found the guy in critical condition on Tuesday afternoon.
A brown snake, one of the deadliest snake species in the world, most likely bit him. According to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, the victim is Jerromy Brookes, who is 47 years old.
According to a spokesman for the Queensland Ambulance Service, he was taken to a hospital in Townsville but later died.
Brookes was trying to get rid of the snake from a child care center where his wife and their two girls worked as early childhood educators, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. He did not have a permit to handle or remove snakes.
His family’s boss, Michelle O’Connor, told ABC, “He was doing his very best to keep the kids safe.”
In Australia, snake bites rarely kill people—only a few deadly attacks are reported each year.
There are about 200 hospitalizations every year because of brown snake bites, according to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare.
According to Christina Zdenek of the Australian Reptile Academy, “we have very good quality antivenom here in Australia.”
The cold-blooded reptiles are most busy from September to January, when the austral summer hits.
“Remain still and calm, and wrap the whole limb tightly with a stretchy bandage,” Zdenek said, which was the best way to treat a snake bite.
Furthermore, she said, “Never try to kill a snake.”
Animals that are related to the eastern brown snake live in eastern Australia, southern and eastern New Guinea, and in small groups in the central and western parts of the country. Their bad tempers make them “fast-moving and aggressive,” according to Australian Geographic, which calls them the most dangerous snake in the country.
Being medium-sized and thin, these snakes are very tough, very poisonous, and at ease living with people in both rural and crowded urban places.
An Australian boy, 3 years old, discovered an eastern brown snake curled up in his underwear drawer earlier this year. A trained snake wrangler took the snake away completely safely.
An Australian woman in 2022 discovered a brown snake hiding in her old radiogram cabinet.
