A bike rider in New South Wales, Australia, has been bitten on the thigh by a deadly eastern brown snake after accidently running over the highly venomous serpent, which was sunbathing on the trail.
The two-metre-long snake became entangled in the drivetrain of the woman’s bike after she ran it over while riding the Northern Rivers Rail Trail near Burringbar, in northern New South Wales. Terrified, it lashed out and landed a bite on the woman’s leg.
Eastern browns are widely considered to be the second-most poisonous land snake on the planet (after the taipan), and the woman, reported to be in her 60s, was fortunate in that she received a ‘dry bite’ – which means no venom was injected into her system.
Paramedics attended the incident, which happened around lunchtime on Wednesday 15 July, and the cyclist was taken to Tweed Valley hospital, where she is believed to be in a stable condition. Unfortunately, it was a less happy ending for the snake.
Local snake catcher Sarah Mailey from I'll Catch It Snake Catchers was called in to disentangle the snake from the bike. "It had its full head swinging around, able to bite and there were a few people standing around just watching," she recounted to ABC News.
After some time, she was able to pin the snake's head, to stop it biting anyone else, while police officers and some bystanders extracted the rest of the animal from the bike. Sadly, the snake was subsequently euthanised, because it was deemed too severely injured to recover.
After the incident, Mailey told Cycling Weekly that in Australia (and other countries where venomous snakes are common) people cycling should always be prepared for an encounter. "It's so important to take a compression bandage on rides, and know how to perform snakebite first aid," she said.
Mailey explained to reporters that the snake was not in prime condition even before the accident, with a pre-existing eye injury that likely contributed to its slow reaction as the bike approached.
“She probably just thought it was a stick or a shadow and given that the snake’s blind in that eye, it’s obviously not seen the shadow coming towards it and given it enough time to move,” Mailey told The Guardian.
It’s mid winter in Australia, and being cold-blooded creatures, snakes move slower in cooler weather, when they’re often seen trying to absorb heat from the dark tarmacked roads and trails.
“If it was any other time of year and the snake wasn’t blind, it would have had energy and seen her coming and got out of the way,” Mailey explained. “So it’s just a mixture of the time of the year, it being a blind snake, and it’s just part of life, unfortunately.”
