An Instagram famous family from Australia decided to spend a birthday celebration for their 7-year-old at the zoo, when the nocturnal animals finally come alive. Unfortunately, they quickly found out that the animals were a little too lively when the child went to interact with a snake that the zoo personnel claimed was usually chill — he ended up getting bitten.
The mom, Kristy Craft, has been running a popular Instagram for her kids that has since grown to over 350K followers. Craft explained why she started the page to Newsweek, saying, “We started the Instagram page in 2022 to document Kalea and Cruz fundraising for a local charity who had played a major role in cleaning up our waterways and beaches after catastrophic floods.” She continued, “Kalea was 7 and Cruz was 4 and they were surfing for 30 days straight. Cruz had a bit of a meltdown about wanting to catch more waves. I posted the video and it went viral.” And the family never looked back.
On this specific birthday, Kalea went to have the zoo’s snake slither around his neck. We’ve all seen people who do this — it’s probably exhilarating to have a reptile that people consider extremely dangerous just carefully probing you and never actually trying to harm. In fact, the zoo owners had guaranteed the family that the snake had never harmed someone. But this time, the snake decided to act out of character and actually bit the child.
Zookeepers are not always trustworthy, but in all fairness, you can’t exactly predict every move of a wild animal either — they’re considered wild for a reason after all. Fortunately, the snake was non-venomous, and Kalea got off with minor physical injuries. Craft managed to convince the zoo that should she post the snake bite on her Instagram, she would not reveal the name of the institution so that they don’t get attacked online. And they must have come to an agreement, because a gleeful Kalea explained the entire story on their joint Instagram page.
The comments were actually quite positive. One user commented, “Cricket mate! That’s incredible! But what a story! You’re amazing! Keep smiling and telling us those jokes! Maybe some snake jokes now, eh?!?! Love to you from Michigan!” Another added, “Wow! You are so lucky it wasn’t a venomous snake. So happy you are okay. That will be a story you will be able to share the rest of your life.”
As we probably already know, social media is not always so welcoming to parents who go on adventures with their children for obvious reasons. But it seems Craft’s fans are fully on board with this particular family’s colorful adventures, regardless of how risque they might first appear.
The fact that it happened in Australia, however, could have something to do with it. Not for nothing, Australia has had a long storied reputation as the island down under where man and the wild come together as one. Just recently, an Australian surfer even managed to survive a shark attack simply by punching the apex predator in the ocean, and he even vowed to go back surfing as soon as he gets another surfboard.
All in all, happy that Kalea made it out safe with a great story to tell.
