YOUNG BOY’S LUCKY ESCAPE AS PYTHON ONLY HAD EYES FOR PET DOG

A NINE-year-old boy has had a lucky escape after a carpet python slithered over him while he was sleeping to kill his toy poodle dog.

Mother-of-two Jordana Terrades has described her horror after finding a coastal carpet python seemingly pushed a door open to enter her Mt Carbine farmhouse, 30km southwest of Port Douglas.

“I went out ... about 8pm, just to get some food from the orchard,” she said.

“I opened and closed the door, but didn’t lock the door.

“We all went to sleep, and I just heard some inhuman sound, and woke up and put the lights on — and there it was at my feet.”

The python, estimated to be at least 4m long, had coiled its body tightly around Ms Terrades’ toy poodle/king charles cavalier cross, Tarzan, and was about to swallow the small five-month-old puppy in her bedroom.

She believed the snake had slithered over her nine-yearold son, Woody, who had been sleeping on a mattress in the hallway, to get to the small dog.

“I called my neighbour, and he came to help me, because I just didn’t know how to handle it,” she said.

“It was all quite traumatising and I’m not normally a panicker or screamer.

“The snake made its territory inside my house.”

The male neighbour, who did not want to be named, rushed to the property within two minutes about three weeks ago.

“The python was just in the

IT WAS ALL QUITE TRAUMATISING, AND I’M NOT NORMALLY A PANICKER OR SCREAMER … IT SCARED THE S*** OUT OF ME JUST AS MUCH AS (THE MUM AND CHILDREN) TOO. MT CARBINE MOTHER-OF-TWO JORDANA TERRADES AFTER DISCOVERING A PYTHON HAD SLITHERED OVER HER SLEEPING SON TO KILL A PET DOG

house and had been squashing the dog,” he said.

“I lifted it up with my cane knife and dragged it outside.

“The snake was too big to handle, so I had to kill it.

“It scared the s*** out of me, just as much as (the mum and children), too.”

The puppy — one of two in the house — did not survive the ordeal.

The python was buried in the backyard.

The neighbour said Mt Carbine was a magnet for large pythons during the wet season.

Coastal carpet pythons have been known to reach more than 4m long.

According to the Department of Environment and Science, the species is known to consume mammals such as rodents and possums and some reptiles, birds and frogs.

It kills by coiling its long body around its prey and squeezing until suffocation occurs — a technique known as constriction.