Mother Randomly Awakens At 3:30 A.M. To Find A 6-Foot Python Around Her Toddler

shutterstock_84467992In what certainly must have seemed like a nightmare at the time, 22-year-old Tess Guthrie of Australia awoke to the sound of her cat hissing. But that’s when she glanced over and found a very unwelcome third party in her bed.

News.com.au reports that Guthrie was sharing a bed with her 2-year-old daughter, Zara. After the family cat starting hissing, Guthrie noticed a python wrapped around her daughter’s arm three times.

The mother seriously grabbed that serpent by its head to get it off her kid, which in turn caused the python to bite the toddler three times on her left hand. The child was treated at Lismore Base Hospital and released.

Tex’s Snake Removals ultimately removed the python from Guthrie’s home. But the five to 10-year-old reptile apparently was not looking to threaten baby Zara:

“The snake, not in any way, shape or form, had intended to eat the baby – it was trying to have a group hug,” [Tex Tillis, from Tex’s Snake Removals] told The Daily Telegraph.

“Pythons, underneath their bottom jaw they have a row of sensors which enable them to see the world in terms of infrared pictures. So in the dark they’re going to see a baby as this warm spot.”

Ever the friendly lady, Guthrie asked to have the python — deemed not big by any means — released back into the wild just around three miles from her home.

But the “courageous and gutsy” mother, as Tillis described her, also feels that her cat was privy to the snake’s presence days before that fateful night:

“After we went to the hospital and Tex came, they found the snake sort of down behind the bedside table and in-between the wall but I don’t doubt he was there for days,” [Gunthrie] told the local TV station.

Which is my cue to pay more attention the next time my cat starts randomly staring at the stove.

(photo: Eric Isselee / Shutterstock)

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