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An Australian airliner was grounded after four baby pythons escaped from their container in the aircraft's hold. The snakes, just six inches long, were among 12 Stimson's pythons being flown from Alice Springs to Melbourne. At first it was thought the reptiles may have been eaten by the other snakes, but this was discounted after they were weighed on landing. Passengers were transferred to other aircraft. The jet was fumigated but the snakes' bodies are yet to be found.

A Kenyan man bit a python which wrapped him in its coils and dragged him up a tree during a fierce three-hour struggle, police have told the BBC. The serpent seized farm worker Ben Nyaumbe in the Malindi area of Kenya's Indian Ocean coast at the weekend. Mr Nyaumbe bit the snake on the tip of the tail during the exhausting battle in the village of Sabaki. Police rescued Mr Nyaumbe and captured the 13ft (4m) reptile, before taking it to a sanctuary, but it later escaped.

What with the State Sponsored Media doing its best to deny that Mr. Obama is a Socialist and Mr. Obama's own lame attempts at covering his true political identity ("I don't think I'm a Socialist"), I was reminded of a skit Monty Python did (frankly, most everything reminds me of a Monty Python sketch but, that's another thread.) about a small bed and breakfast in Minehead, England where Adolf Hitler, Von Ribbentrop and Heinrich Himmler were hiding out, plotting to reintroduce his brand of Socialism by renaming it "Bocialism.": Landlady Come on in, Mr and Mrs Johnson, oh this is...

IT WOULD be enough to put phobia sufferers in their grave - 14 baby carpet pythons slithering around in your bedroom. Esther Honegger was "horrified" when she found the baby snakes in her Fannie Bay home. "I thought 'Oh my God, how many of them are there?'," she said. "I hate snakes and as I walked backwards and forwards I would see another one." "They were everywhere - there was one curled around my bedhead, another around the bottom of the chair, and when I went outside there was one in the hallway, another on the (stair) railing and another...

A PYTHON has been filmed trying to swallow a wallaby whole at a Cairns university. Posted on break.com and believed to have taken place at James Cook University, students can be heard squealing with fear as the python clamps its huge jaws around the creature and begins to swallow.

VIRGINIA BEACH - A pet snake may have strangled its owner to death in Virginia Beach earlier this week, police say. Amanda Ruth Black, 25, was found dead in her home on Maracas Arch around 11:30 p.m. Tuesday. Her husband called police and said he found her lying in front of the pet snake's large cage, which was empty. Police spokesman Adam Bernstein said the medical examiner's preliminary report found that the woman died from "asphyxiation caused by neck compression." Investigators are still awaiting the final results of the autopsy.

A local girl is recovering after being attacked by her own pet, a Burmese python. The father says he was forced to kill the snake to save his daughter. The family says they never imagined the pet they loved would attack. While they didn't want their faces shown, they told News 3 they're coming forward to remind others about the possible dangers. "She was wrapped around my ribs and every time I moved she'd squeeze them tighter so I couldn't breathe," 13-year-old Katherine said. Katherine's uncle and father came to her rescue. "As I was untangling, it was wrapping around...

A man who chose "Lloyds is pants" as his telephone banking password said he found it had been changed by a member of staff to "no it's not".Steve Jetley, from Shrewsbury, said he chose the password after falling out with Lloyds TSB over insurance that came free with an account. He said he was then banned from changing it back or to another password of "Barclays is better".

A three-metre (10-foot) python has killed a student zookeeper who let the snake out of its enclosure in Venezuela while working a night shift at the zoo. Horrified employees at the Caracas zoo discovered the Burmese Python as it tried to swallow its victim's head. "The young man underestimated the animal's instinct,"

A PYTHON has killed a student zookeper at the weekend and was caught trying to swallow the man's body when horrified coworkers arrived, Venezuela's El Universal newspaper reports. The other employees of the Caracas zoo had to beat the 3m-long Burmese Python to make it release the body of 29-year-old Erick Arrieta, whose head it was swallowing. < > "The young man underestimated the animal's instinct," said the director general of the Parque del Este zoo, Javier Hernandez.

The snake hunter shakes his head as he crouches over a sandy trail that pushes through Collier-Seminole State Park. Hoping to spy subtle signs of his slithering prey, Paul Andreadis instead finds only pebble-sized pockmarks left by raindrops overnight and maybe tracks left by a deer, probably that morning. “No, nothing here,” said Andreadis, a snake researcher visiting Collier-Seminole last week from Denison University, located near Columbus, Ohio. Andreadis stands up and, from behind the mosquito netting hanging from the brim of his wide-brimmed hat, sets his sights on the trail ahead. He knows Burmese pythons are out there; a...

Quick little story showing that I’m not the only one who doesn’t listen to his owner. Thankfully for a Bridgeport, Ct police officer, neither do snakes. (Police officers in Bridgeport, Connecticut, responded Tuesday to a report of domestic disturbance. Apparently, 21-year-old Victor Rodriguez was threatening his girlfriend with his pet python. As the officers entered...

Bridgeport police say they arrested a city man after he ordered his pet to attack two officers. Lucky for them that 9-foot-long pythons aren't very obedient. Rodriguez and his pet were both taken away: Rodriguez to jail on a $10,000 bond, and the albino python ...

MIAMI (AFP) - Giant pythons capable of swallowing a dog and even an alligator are rapidly making south Florida their home, potentially threatening other southeastern states, a study said. "Pythons are likely to colonize anywhere alligators live, including north Florida, Georgia and Louisiana," said Frank Mazzotti, University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences professor, in his two-year study. The pythons thriving in Florida are mostly Burmese pythons from Myanmar that were brought over as pets and then turned loose in the wild. From 2002-2005, 201 of the beasts were caught by state authorities, but in the last two...

Mere flesh wound, says maimed Hillary on Holy Grail trail WHICH movie is Hillary Clinton? After Clinton's win in Pennsylvania, I'm convinced the right movie is in fact Monty Python and the Holy Grail. More precisely, the scene in which Arthur — the Obama character — confronts the Black Knight (Hillary), lops off his arm and declares: "Now stand aside, worthy adversary." But the Black Knight refuses to succumb, declaring "'tis but a scratch" and it's "just a flesh wound" as Arthur dismembers him. In their desperation to win, however, the Clintons might well end up destroying themselves — like...

BRISBANE, Australia (AP) -- A 16-foot python stalked a family dog for days before swallowing the pet whole in front of horrified children in the Australian tropics, animal experts said Wednesday. The boy and girl, aged 5 and 7, watched as the scrub python devoured their silky terrier-Chihuahua crossbreed Monday at their home near Kuranda in Queensland state. Stuart Douglas, owner of the Australian Venom Zoo in Kuranda, said scrub pythons typically eat wild animals such as wallabies, a smaller relative of the kangaroo, but sometimes turn to pets in urban areas. "It actively stalked the dog for a number...

In addition to everything else to worry about, now comes the Burmese python. The giant snakes are slithering from Florida toward the Bay Area, very slowly to be sure, but inexorably. And they can strangle and eat an entire alligator...

SETBO VILLAGE, Cambodia - Being responsible parents, rice farmer Khuorn Sam Ol and his wife might not be expected to be keen on having their child play with a 16-foot-long, 220-pound snake. Yet they are unflustered that their 7-year-old son, Uorn Sambath, regularly sleeps in the massive coil of a female python, rides the reptile, kisses it and even pats it down with baby powder. "There is a special bond between them," Khuorn Sam Ol explained. "My son played with the snake when he was still learning to crawl. They used to sleep together in a cradle." The boy and...

For the second time in two years, a 16-foot python has been found in the wild west of Vero Beach -- this time killed by a large roadside bush mower on a canal bank along 58th Avenue. On Friday, Jesse Parker was mowing for the county along a large canal south of 12th Street and hit what he thought was bricks. "When I backed up, a head popped up. It was huge," ... "It is lucky this happened," Vero Beach Animal Control Officer Bruce Dangerfield said Monday. He said the snake could have grown 25- to 30-feet long. Though pythons...

Usually it's a cuddly teddy bear or a favourite action figure that kids need before they can get to bed. But not for Cambodian six-year-old Sambath Uon; he needs "Lucky", his trusty six-metre long python, before he can sleep. "I love the python like my sister," Sambath said. "All my friends are jealous of her." Sambath first encountered the snake when he was three months old, and Lucky was only 50cm. His parents didn't like to see Lucky with Sambath, and tried to take her back into the forest three times - only to find that Lucky would keep returning...