A traveler in Australia shocked the internet by posting photos of a Christmas tree surrounded by de.adly snakes.
“Snakes hanging on a Christmas tree in Melbourne,” says the caption on Maxime Zimmerman’s Facebook post from yesterday. The image depicts three venomous serpents coiled around a tinsel-adorned signpost like squishy Christmas feather boas.
The scaly invaders were later identified as a red-bellied black snake, an eastern brown snake, and a tiger snake, all of which are among the most de.adly serpents on the planet. To the relief of ophidiophobes everywhere, Zimmerman later revealed to the Daily Mail that the owner had purposely placed the festive fang-bangers there for the Yuletide photograph. They allegedly belonged to Snake Man, a Melbourne man who had their venom removed so they no longer posed a thre.at.
Skeptics on social media were wise to the reptile Rick Roll, responding with “those men were planted there by someone” and “fake snake!”
“This is staged, people, this is not a representative of Australia,” one Facebook herpetologist explained. “These three snakes do not normally cross paths, let alone congregate in the center of a metropolis where they do not belong.”
In the same comment area, though, Zimmerman laughs that “it’s not false, they’re extremely genuine.”
In Australia, serpentine scrooges wrecking Christmas is an all-too-common occurrence. After discovering a 10-foot python on their porch last week, a Queensland couple was almost offered an extra tight holiday embrace.
