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.