A toddler, who was playing marbles with a friend on Sunday evening and who had put his hand into a hole that a marble had slipped into, died some hours later when doctors discovered he had been bitten by a snake.

Although he was bleeding from the hand when he went home, it was only when he started vomiting some six hours later that his parents rushed him to a hospital, where he died later. They were shocked to hear that he had been bitten by a snake.