Mum left rattled after being bitten by snake in pram

A young mum was bitten on the ankle by a poisonous snake after it hitched a lift to her flat in a city centre apartment inside a child’s pram when she went for a walk in a nearby wood at St Florian am Inn in Upper Austria.

Jacqueline Osterkorn, 20, had left the pram in the hallway at her flat and picked up her twin sons Jan and Joel, aged 4 months, and was sitting on the sofa when she suddenly felt a sharp pain in her leg.

She said: “It was extremely painful like I had been burned and when I lifted my leg up and looked on the floor I saw the snake crawling away. I grabbed both of my babies and ran out of the flat and upstairs to my mother who called emergency services.”

Doctors found that the young mum had been bitten by a viper that had apparently come into the flat after hiding in the children’s pram.

Although extremely painful it is rarely fatal for adults, although the children especially as young as Jacqueline’s babies Jan and Joel the consequences could have been far more serious.

The snake was removed by fireman and the young mum allowed home after spending a night under observation at the hospital.

She said: “I am glad it was me and not my babies that were bitten – I shudder to think what the consequences might have been. To think that it was in the pram the whole time when we travelled back from the woods.”