I’m telling you, the nerve of some of these wild animals, just sauntering about like they own the planet! Have they learned nothing from millennia of our abuse? The latest intruder was a Burmese python, discovered fast asleep the other day under the bushes at the edge of our condo’s kiddies’ playground.

Now, there are a couple of little screamers who frequent the playground that I wouldn’t mind being rid of, but this chubby snake gave the poor gardener quite a shock, I’ll tell you. A crowd quickly gathered, the more giddy tenants snapping pictures, the more pragmatic wondering how many shoes and handbags it could be converted into.

It was just a juvenile, so I’m “assured”, but easily big enough to gulp down a soi dog or a certain particularly noisy Korean toddler, given the chance. The staff called in the experts this time, unlike the previous monster invasion when they wrestled a giant monitor lizard out of the pool by themselves and flung it over the perimeter wall.

The SPCA arrived in a truck, woke the python up, dragged it out of bed and, clearly unconcerned about its actual welfare or anything, happily posed for many, many souvenir snapshots with the baffled reptile in their arms.

Python molurus bivittatus, Wikipedia quotes Professor Know-It-All as saying, is:
(a) one of the six biggest snakes in the world, growing up to eight metres (in length, I presume);
(b) mainly nocturnal, as we have seen;
(c) quite at home in trees when young;
(d) an excellent swimmer, so it had probably already sized up the pool adjacent;
(e) carnivorous, favouring any bird or mammal it can get in its mouth long enough to squeeze to death.

“They are often found near human habitation,” the lazy boy’s dictionary goes on to say, “due to the presence of rats and other vermin as a food source.” My wife did see a rat in exactly that same spot a few days before the snake showed up, though it (the rat) was the only one we’ve seen.

“However, their equal affinity for domesticated birds and mammals means that they are often treated as a pest.” Three storeys above the python’s dozing spot was my balcony, on which reside three pet lovebirds (yes, three — it’s one of those kinky arrangements). So I suppose I’m responsible for luring deadly anacondas into the neighbhourhood.

“A five-metre-long Burmese Python is certainly capable of overpowering and killing a fully grown adult,” Wikipedia concludes cheerfully.

And now for an inevitable reference to Monty Python: The comedy group gave varying versions of the origin of its name, but the most endearing would be that it’s an allusion to Field Marshal Lord Montgomery paired with a “slippery-sounding” surname.

More fascinating zoology from Dorseyland:
Heteropoda venatoria
Buceros bicornis
Varanus dorseylandisus