FEARLESS eight-year-old Kyle Smith would make even Crocodile hunter Steve Irwin squirm.

Kyle gave his parents the fright of their lives when they spotted him with both hands wrapped around a 70cm snake in the family's swimming pool at Munruben, in Logan City, on Saturday.

He reluctantly set the wriggling creature free after more than a minute of coaxing from his mum Kathie, only to have it turn around and bite him on the hand.

The culprit, originally feared to be a potentially deadly brown snake, was captured and shared an ambulance with Kyle as he was taken for treatment.

Logan Hospital staff quickly established it was a yellow-faced whip snake, whose bite is painful but not usually deadly.

It is the third time this year that Kyle, who has autism, has wrestled with a snake.

During winter, his grandmother was watching him beside the pool when she called out a question that sent his parents bounding outside.

"Do you keep a rubber snake in the pool?" she asked innocently.

No such luck. Kyle had grabbed hold of the real thing by the tail and was trying to liven up the creature, apparently numb from the cold.

Three weeks ago, he had picked up a snake from the grass and taken it on to his trampoline.

His dad Terry found him pulling at the snake's tail every time it tried to slide away. "He has absolutely no fear, which can be a problem," Mr Smith said yesterday.

"You could write a book about him and he's only eight years old."

On Saturday, mum Kathie had left him alone for a moment while she went to the bathroom.

She heard him laugh "in a way that usually means he's doing something he shouldn't be doing".

Snake bite victims are advised to move as little as possible and wrap a bandage firmly around the bite area.

But the hyperactive Kyle, who does not talk, was not the easiest patient to keep still and did not want anything to do with the bandage.

Mr Smith thanked the paramedics who came to the house for handling the special-needs case with sensitivity.

One of the paramedics, Gary Fuller, said the Smith family had done the right thing by calling for an ambulance. "Every snake bite needs to be treated as venomous until proven otherwise," he said.

"The most dangerous thing to do is have a home identification of a snake. It's really playing with lives."

He said recent rain may be bringing more snakes out, while school holidays put more children in danger.

A two-year-old boy was also taken to Beaudesert Hospital on Saturday after being bitten by a snake, but was not seriously injured and allowed to go home.