Canberra -
A three-year-old Australian boy was lucky to escape unharmed after a collection of nine eggs he found in his yard hatched into a slithering tangle of deadly snakes.
Reptile carer Trish Prendergast says young wildlife enthusiast Kyle Cummings could have been killed if he had handled the eastern brown snakes - the world's most venomous species on land after Australia's inland taipan.
She said on Friday that Kyle found the eggs a few weeks ago at his home in Queensland state. He had no idea what kind of eggs they were.
He put the eggs into a food container and stashed them in his closet, where his mother found them on Monday. Seven of the eggs hatched, but the snakes remained trapped in the container.
Prendergast released the snakes into the wild. - Sapa-AP