According to Hodgson’s Snakes Rescue and Removal, Gianni Hodgson was called out to a school to remove a venomous snake from a student’s backpack.
Photos showed Hodgson removing the snake from the student’s backpack and placing it inside a bite-proof snake handler’s bag.
He later posted photos to Facebook letting people know that it was a red-bellied black snake, which is known to hospitalize around 80 Australians per year.
The officials at the school said they were not sure if the snake got into the school and then slithered into the kid’s backpack or if the snake hitched a ride to the school with the child.
Hodgson wrote on Facebook, “This red bellied black snake was found in a student’s backpack at a school in Stawell this afternoon. Not sure if a resident or if he hitched a ride…for privacy reasons we can’t name the school but no need to panic. Everyone is safe.”
According to wildlife experts, the red-bellied black snake is venomous and can make a person very ill if bitten, however, no one has ever been recorded dying from a bite.
They normally grow around three feet but they have been known to grow up to eight feet long. Hodgson said that he finds them all the time in weird places but he’s never found one in a kid’s school backpack.
“This probably takes the cake. But I have found them in roofs. One was stuck down a mine shaft in Creswick so [I] needed to get a really long ladder to get down and get it,” he told Newsweek.