Merry Hissmas!

A backpacker in Australia horrified the internet after uploading pictures of a Christmas tree with venomous snakes coiled around it.

“Snakes hanging on a Christmas tree in Melbourne,” reads the caption to the Facebook photo posted yesterday by Maxime Zimmerman. Indeed, the pic shows three poisonous serpents wrapped around a tinsel-toting signpost like fleshy X-mas feather boas.

The scaly interlopers have since been identified as a red-bellied black snake, an eastern brown snake and a tiger snake, which rank among the most venomous serpents on Earth.

However, to the relief of ophidiophobes everywhere, Zimmerman later revealed to the Daily Mail that the festive fang-bangers had been purposefully placed there by the owner for the Yuletide snap. They reportedly belonged to a Melbourne resident known as Snake Man, who had their venom removed so they no longer pose a threat.

Social media skeptics were wise to the reptilian Rick Roll, posting replies of “those guys have been put there by someone” and “fake snake!”

“This is staged people, this is not a representation of Australia,” said one Facebook herpetologist. “These 3 snakes do not naturally cross paths let alone bundle together in the middle of a city where it is not their natural habitat.”

However, Zimmerman jokes that “it’s not fake, they’re very real” in the same comment section.

Unfortunately, serpentine scrooges crashing Christmas is an all-too-real phenomenon in Australia. A Queensland couple was nearly given an extra snug holiday hug after stumbling upon a 10-foot python on their porch last week.

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