COURIER MAIL (Brisbane, Australia) 20 August 06 Snakes alive! (Edmund Burke)
Meet plucky pup Macy, the dog who swallowed a deadly snake alive and suffered little more than a bellyache.
The 75cm eastern brown snake got more than it bargained for when it bit the three-month-old golden retriever on the paw.
The pup promptly wolfed down the venomous killer.
"I just thought 'Oh my God!' I'd never seen anything like it," Macy's owner Elizabeth Sullivan told The Sunday Mail.
Ms Sullivan was walking the dog on her sister's property near Bundaberg when the puppy yelped in pain.
She was about 4m away and when she looked at the pup there was still a length of the snake, including its head, hanging out of the dog's mouth.
"The snake just kept getting smaller and smaller and then, gulp, it was gone.
"How long can a snake hold its breath? I just imagined it thrashing around in there biting her," she said.
The eastern brown snake is the second-most venomous snake in the world. One bite can easily kill an adult dog.
"We get quite a lot of them and I've been bitten myself so I knew I had to get on the phone to the vet straight away," Ms Sullivan said.
She called Bundaberg vet Fred Bronson, who could hardly believe what he heard. "I've been a vet for 35 years and I've never heard anything like it. But I did know that time was of the essence so I told her to get here as soon as possible," he said.
A frantic Ms Sullivan and Macy arrived at the surgery 15 minutes later and Mr Bronson set to work.
"I gave Macy some medication to make her vomit up the snake. We were all worried because we didn't know whether the snake was dead or alive," he said.
The snake came out dead, in one piece but with a chewed-up section of tail.
"I was able to give her the antivenene then for the bite on her paw. Who knows if the snake managed to bite her when he was inside?" Mr Bronson said.
Ms Sullivan said Macy was still a bit weak but mentally the same as ever. "She's not afraid of anything," she said.
Snakes alive!