A five-year-old boy was rescued from the jaws of a 10ft python by his horrified dad as it tried to swallow him whole. Little Beau Blake was playing next to the pool at his home in Byron Bay, New South Wales, Australia when the waiting reptile struck.
The youngster was then bitten, constricted and dragged into the swimming pool by the monster snake, which was roughly three times his size, the Daily Star reports.
Pythons are known to squeeze their prey to death within just a couple of minutes before swallowing them whole - with their victims including humans on rare occasions.
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In a dramatic rescue effort, Beau was pulled from the pool by his 76-year-old grandfather Allan before dad Ben grappled with the snake and managed to prise it off his leg.
Speaking to Melbourne radio station 3AW, Ben said: "Beau was just walking around the edge of the pool... and I believe the python was sort of sitting there waiting for a victim to come along... and Beau was it.
"I saw a big black shadow come out of the bush and before they hit the bottom, it was completely wrapped around his leg...
"Once we cleaned up the blood and told him that he wasn't going to die because it wasn't a poisonous snake... he was pretty good actually."
The parent described the incident as quite "an ordeal", but said his son is an "absolute trooper" and back in good spirits following the snake attack.
Speaking of the rescue effort, Ben added: "I'm not a little lad... [so] I had him released within 15-20 seconds,"
Ben held on to the python for 10 minutes as he tried to calm down his children and father, before releasing the "naughty thing" back into the wild. He added that pythons were part and parcel of living in the area, saying "look...it is Australia".
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