Get used to this sight: it'll make your last moments easier.
Courtesy chylinski marcinDecades of the careful planning and strategic positioning of snakes across the world may have been laid to waste by the actions of one overeager python.
Twenty-nine year old biology student Erick Arrieta was killed and partially eaten by a 10-foot Burmese python at a zoo in Caracas, Venezuela. Working the night shift alone in the reptile section of the zoo on Saturday, Arrieta, for reasons that remain unclear, broke zoo regulations and entered the cage holding the python.
The next time Arrieta was scene, he was dead and wearing a snake over his face, so the details of the attack are not known. However, I think we can make some assumptions of just what happened on Saturday.
“Snake,” probably said Arrieta, “You’re the only one I can talk to. I hate biology, but I love snakes. What am I to do?” Arrieta then very likely proceeded to subject the python to the unfortunate details of his love life, academic career, and personal ailments. The snake, I imagine, endured this as long as it could, the details of its assignment running through its eager brain all the while. But when Arrieta mentioned that “nice guys finish last,” the snake could no longer restrain itself.
“Ha ha!” said the snake, and sprang into action, latching on to Erick’s arm with dozens of needle sharp, inward-curving teeth.
“Oh no!” thought Erick, but was unable to utter the words, as the snake had already begun to wrap around the man’s chest and neck. Instead of straight out squeezing Arrieta into jerky, the python, in the way of all constrictors, would have slowly asphyxiated the student, tightening its coils as the man struggled or exhaled, until it had fully wrapped itself around its suffocating victim.
When Arrieta finally gave up the ghost, the snake did its best to hide the evidence. Starting with the head.
This is how the other zoo employees found their colleague in the morning—with his head inside a snake. The python was then beaten until it released the body.
With these events, phases one through three of an ambitious and clandestine serpentine plan have been unveiled to humans. Phase one: get close. Phase two: attack! Phase three: eat.
The fourth and final stage is now all too clear: digest. I only hope that Arrieta’s brave sacrifice was not too late.
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The golf ball-eating snake prepares to strike again: Unusual markings for a python, but I'm no herpetologist.
Courtesy Brent and MariLynnWhen I was little (and, um, still) I had this totally irrational fear of getting a bowling ball stuck in my throat.
How could this be? I don’t know. I seem to remember someone telling me once that a man in Russia got into the Guinsess Book of Records for swallowing a bowling ball, which is obviously untrue. There’s not a human mouth on the planet large enough to allow a bowling ball into the throat, not to mention the fact that my neck is about half the thickness of a bowling ball anyway. And yet… The horrible image of a Russian man with a bowling ball lodged behind his Adam’s apple returns to me every so often and just about throws me into a cold sweat. What would you do if you got a bowling ball stuck in your throat? You couldn’t spit it back up (because your mouth is too small), and obviously you couldn’t swallow it, because then it would just be stuck in your stomach, which might even be worse. Oh my.
Why was I even thinking about that? Again, I don’t know.
Hey, look at this interesting story about a python that swallowed four golf balls, and got them stuck in its stomach.
Apparently, a couple in New South Wales had put the balls in their chicken coop to coax a hen into nesting in a particular spot, and were surprised to find, not long after, a very lumpy looking python and no golf balls. They then “rushed the reptile to nearby Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary,” where the balls were surgically removed by a veterinarian. Maybe there’s a serious golf ball shortage in Australia.
The article also helpfully provides links to several recent stories about pythons swallowing such indigestible objects as pregnant sheep, alligators and queen-sized electric blankets (a nice warm meal, I suppose).
It looks like pythons are ready for the remedial class of life.
A glance into the future?: The future is a scary place, with snakes, and bleak, washed out colors.
Courtesy nyghtowlI found this story recently, about a little lad in Cambodia who is inseparable from a wild, 15-foot-long Burmese python. Apparently the snake snaked into town when the kid, who is now seven, was just a few months old. The boy’s father attempted to return the creature to the forest three times, but it just kept coming back, and now the kid refuses to go to sleep without the snake’s company.
15 feet is obviously pretty big, but, being a Burmese python, one of the largest snakes in the world, this particular snake is likely to get even bigger, up to 25 feet and 400 pounds. Pythons aren’t venomous, but they are constrictors, meaning that they generally kill their prey by wrapping their body around it and squeezing it to death (suffocating it). Burmese pythons are typically afraid of humans, but are opportunistic feeders, and “will typically eat almost any time food is offered.” Big pythons will even seek prey such as pigs and goats, animals the size of, say, a seven-year-old boy.
Still, the kid has survived so far. And I suppose a person might actually be safer with a 15-foot snake following them around all the time.
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