Free Republic

Tue Apr 1, 6:22 AM ET A Green Tree Python sleeps during the early hours in Munich's Hellabrunn Zoo, April 1, 2003. When resting, Green Tree Pythons loop saddle-fashion over a branch, anchoring themselves with their prehensile tail and cradling their head in the middle of their coils. REUTERS/Alexandra Winkler

A 6 meter African rock python swallowed a 10 year old boy near Durban, the first recorded 'man eating' incident for the species.For three hours other children hid up mango trees near the township of Lamontville, too terrified to flee, as the snake first trapped the young boy and squeezed the life out of him before consuming him whole.Police and snake expers found no trace of the child, or his clothing, except for a trail of flattened grass and a trail leading down to a nearby stream.The incident last week prompted wide spread panic among the 50,000 residents of the...

A young South African boy is missing, his friends say he was swallowed by an African rock python, and a snake expert says he believes them. "I've dealt with a few cases like this and I always dispel them as absolute rubbish. But in my opinion this one did happen," snake park owner Craig Smith told AFP yesterday. He said a group of boys, aged between five and eight, were playing in a mango plantation in the eastern harbour city of Durban at the weekend. One of the boys later ran home and told his mother his friend had been...

WAILUKU >> State officials are to resume a search for a snake, believed to be either a boa constrictor or a python, in the Awalau Street area in rural Haiku, Maui. The search began Tuesday and continued yesterday, after Haiku resident Antonio Olivera reported a snake slithering across his boots while he was cutting cane grass about two weeks ago. "It was dark green with brown patches, about 3 inches in diameter," Olivera said. He told searchers the snake was 3 to 4 feet long. Neighborhood homeowners thought they could catch the snake, not realizing the difficulty and seriousness of...