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A 12-foot pet Burmese python has broken out of its aquarium and strangled to death a two-year-old girl in her Florida bedroom. Police said Shaunia Hare was already dead when paramedics arrived at her home in Oxford, 50 miles northwest of Orlando. The albino snake had been owned by Charles Darnell, the boyfriend of Shaunia’s mother, who found it in the toddler's bedroom, wrapped around her. Mr Darnell, 32, stabbed the snake until he was able to pry her away, but was too late to save her. Mr Darnell did not have a permit for the snake, the Florida Fish...

OXFORD, Fla. -- A two-year-old girl was strangled by a python at her family's home in Oxford. It is unknown whether the snake was a pet and how the child came in contact with the animal. Pythons can kill by wrapping themselves around a human. Whit Gibbons, a professor of ecology at the University of Georgia, told the Associated Press that "A human is just another prey item to a python -- especially a small human. "A 20-foot python, if it grabbed one of us, would bite us and then within just, instantly, seconds, it would be wrapped all the...

The population of Burmese pythons in Florida's Everglades may have grown to as many as 150,000 as the non-native snakes make a home and breed in the fragile wetlands, officials said on Thursday. Wildlife biologists say the troublesome invaders -- dumped in the Everglades by pet owners who no longer want them -- have become a pest and pose a significant threat to endangered species like the wood stork and Key Largo woodrat. "They eat things that we care about," said Skip Snow, an Everglades National Park biologist, as he showed a captured, 15-foot (4.6-meter) Burmese python to U.S. Interior...

STUNNED dinner party guests lost their appetites as they watched a huge python crack the bones and swallow an adult possum whole. A loud thump on the roof and then a squishy fall to the ground below was the only indication that disaster was looming.

Melissa and Anthony Melendrez have been placed on probation after being charged with child abuse and child neglect following the attack in January in the family's home. During the incident, the snake wrapped itself around the toddler, constricting the child and sinking its fangs into his body. The attack prevented the boy from breathing and he began to turn blue, police reports state. He also suffered several bite wounds. The reticulated python only released the boy from his grip when Mrs Melendrez attacked it with a knife, stabbing it more than a dozen times. The snake was later euthanised, and...

ITHACA, NY--Nearly six months after the Presidential election, former Monty Python star John Cleese needs some new material.According to the Cornell Daily Sun, Cleese, in an appearance on campus, turned serious and launched into an attack on former President George W. Bush: Americans... are “much too respectful to the president,” said Cleese, who went on to say that George W. Bush would not be able to survive a single press conference in England. “It’s pathetic!” he exclaimed. “This is the most important country in the world ... It’s embarrassing because we want America to be great. There is emotion when...

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...