At the park, we found pythons, Russel's vipers, kraits, chequered keelbacks, boas, ratsnakes and a king cobra, all in glass cages.

So George Moore kept a pet python, and cultivated paganness by watching it devour rabbits alive.

No couches of the nymph and Bassarid, Or thymy meadows such as Simois glasses, Lured his exulting feet, my jocund kid, But veldt and kloof and waving jungle grasses, Where lurk the python with unwinking lid, And the lean lion, growling, as he passes, His futile wrath against the hoarse baboons That drape the rocks in chattering platoons.

Angela said, didn't she mean a python?

"It's hell how this place gets hold of you," said Nance, who had shot pythons in Paraguay and had a yacht in Los Angeles harbor.

At the time of writing the reticulated python is said to be leading the whale-headed stork by a matter of three rats.