Python bites, drags Australian boy into pool

SYDNEY - A five-year-old boy has survived being bitten, constricted and knocked into a swimming pool by a python the length of a small car, with his father telling media, "Aw look, it's where we live. It is Australia."

Five-year-old Beau was playing by the edge of a pool in Byron Bay when a three-metre-long (10-foot) python struck from nearby vegetation, his father Ben Blake told Nine radio on Friday.

"I believe the python was sort of sitting there waiting for a victim to come along -- a bird or something -- and Beau was it."

The python bit the child, plunged both into the water and coiled itself around a leg.

The boy's 76-year-old grandfather lept to the rescue, diving into the pool and lifting the boy out -- with snake still attached.

Ben Blake then prised the snake loose and tried to calm the situation.

"I'm not a little lad, I had him released within 15-20 seconds," he told the radio station.

The boy, who was said to be "an absolute trooper", is recovering well.

"Once we cleaned up the blood and told him he wasn't going to die because it wasn't a poisonous snake, he's actually pretty good," Blake said.

While pythons are not venomous, the five-year-old is being treated to prevent the bite from becoming infected.

Describing events as "somewhat of an ordeal", Blake added that snakes were a fact of life in and around the sub-tropical Byron Bay -- a popular tourist town and surf mecca an eight-hour drive north of Sydney.

"It is Australia. They are about," Blake said, adding that the snake was released and "the naughty thing" went straight back into the vegetation -- "the scene of the crime." - AFP