An Australian man has shared the truly inspirational, if not slightly unnerving tale of giving mouth-to-mouth to a pet snake. That is absolute devotion to your pets.
The Queensland man called Bruce — and let’s be honest, this story has serious Bruce energy — called into the Rush Hour With AB & Elliott radio show on Triple M to share his story.
He explained that when his older son was a kiddo, the family had a carpet snake which they’d raised since it was a baby. The snake used to frequently get out of his cage to hang in the living room. I can only assume the snake was a huge Neighbours fan.
Because the snake tried to escape pretty often, they weighed down the lid of his pen.
“We came home one afternoon and he’d tried to get out,” Bruce explained.
The wee scaly fellow had gotten his head “well and truly jammed” under the lid of the pen and couldn’t get back out. And when they lifted up the lid, the snake fell on the ground “like a piece of rope”.
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Of course, Bruce’s son was absolutely devastated by the sight — as you would be — and started shouting, “Oh no, Scales is dead, Scales is dead!”
Two points here. The first is that Scales is a really good name for a snake. The second is that this sounds like the story a guinea pig owner would tell. I don’t know why everyone who owned a guinea pig has an absolute horror story about its untimely demise, but I’m certainly glad I never had one.
At this point, Bruce knew he had to take action to save Scales’ life.
“Oh crikey, I’m going to have to bloody do something here,” he remembered thinking.
He pointed out that some reptiles can go without oxygen for a period of time — using the example of crocodiles staying under water. So there was only one thing for it: mouth-to-mouth.
“I had a look in [and thought], ‘Crikey, there’s some bloody sharp teeth in there’,” he recalled.
“I thought, okay, here we go, let’s have a crack.”
Bruce, a modern hero, gave that bloody snake mouth-to-mouth and it inflated like a “sausage balloon” blown by a clown. His evocative imagery, not mine.
I can’t help but imagine the frog and snake balloons from Shrek.
Eventually, the snake began slowly breathing by itself. Bruce then popped it on his wife’s lap with a water bottle to speed up its metabolism and eventually Scales reared back up, fully alive.
“We still had him for another six or seven years after that,” he said.
It’s like an incredibly wholesome Voldemort and Nagini situation.
I’m very happy Scales lived to hiss another day — though I cannot in good conscience recommend giving a snake mouth-to-mouth.
I can only imagine how badly that could potentially go. Thank God for the RSPCA.
