IT LOOKED like her son’s rubber snake had been left lying in the hallway — until it latched on to her ankle.Nicole Haynes, 38, had just tucked her son Maison into bed at her home in Winmalee in the Blue Mountains when she stepped on the reptile.
The snake, believed to be an eastern brown, bit Ms Haynes once on her left foot, then latched on to her ankle.
“I was screaming and swinging my leg around, and then it flung off across the loungeroom,” Ms Hayes said yesterday.
The mother-of-two, who is recovering in Nepean Hospital, said she thought she had stepped on her 10-year-old Maison’s toy until she felt it slither under her foot.
“It was surreal, I thought it was a toy with something sharp in it, like a pin, but then it wriggled,” Ms Haynes said.
Realising she had been bitten by a snake, Ms Haynes screamed to her son and daughter Tahlia, 17, to come and help her.
“I was screaming and screaming but the portable phone was in the loungeroom, and that’s where the snake had ended up when I flung it off my foot,” Ms Haynes said yesterday.
Ms Haynes stumbled in to the room and grabbed the phone, and gave it to her daughter, who called paramedics for help.
As she recuperated in hospital, WIRES volunteers scoured Ms Haynes’ home looking for the snake.
“We leave the back door ajar for the dog, so I guess that’s how it got in,” Ms Haynes said.
She has no idea how long it had been in the family’s house, and said she “shudders” when she thinks where it could have ended up if the snake hadn’t been stepped on in the hallway.
“The kids’ bedrooms come off the hallway,” she said.
“I don’t want to even think about it.”
A WIRES spokesman said it was a timely reminder for people to be vigilant about snakes throughout summer.
“Keep doors closed around the house . . . and wear appropriate clothing when outside in snake-prone areas,” the spokesman said.