Snake bites 9-month-old baby playing on floor of Massachusetts home

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Tuesday, June 18, 2019
Snake bites 9-month-old baby playing on floor of Massachusetts home
Snake bites 9-month-old baby playing on floor of Massachusetts home. Brian Taff reports during Action News at 4 p.m. on June 18, 2019.

MEDFORD, MA. (WPVI) -- A mother in Massachusetts knows a lot about snakes, but never expected to have the encounter she had with one a few days ago.

Jenna Lees-Rolf's nine-month-old son James was playing on the kitchen floor in their Medford home last week when a five-foot snake slithered out from under the refrigerator and bit the boy on the arm.

Jenna grew up in Australia, where residents are trained about how to handle the country's many poisonous snakes, but having moved away, she assumed that threat was a thing of the past.

"Terrified, I didn't know if it was poisonous or not, so the last thing you want near your child is a snake. The irony is just really funny at the end of the day," Jenna says.

She can laugh about it now, because the milk snake didn't get any venom into little James' arm, and as you can see from that smile, he's recovering just fine.