Python eats family dog
2008-02-27 11:30
Sydney - An Australian man whose pet dog was eaten by a giant python as his family watched in horror is afraid to leave his children alone at home in case of another snake attack, media reports said on Wednesday.
The five-metre python struck on Monday night on the verandah of the Peric family home at Kuranda in Queensland state, the Cairns Post reported.
Family members threw chairs at the snake to scare it off but it was undeterred and continued to eat their chihuahua-cross, the newspaper said.
'Gut-wrenching'
"Actually watching it unfold before your eyes was pretty gut-wrenching," Daniel Peric told the paper.
"We'd had the dog about five years, so it was part of the family."
He said the family guinea pigs and cat had fallen victim to snakes in recent weeks and he was now worried about his two young children Ethan and Talia.
"We have ducted air-conditioning. Call it paranoia, but my big fear is that a snake will get in there," he said.
The family called snake expert Stuart Douglas to try to save their dog but by the time he arrived only the dog's back legs and tail were visible, he said.
Douglas said the snake, a scrub python, had hunted the unsuspecting dog over a period of days, after first eating the family cat.
A snake handler at the Australian Venom Zoo in Kuranda, Douglas said the python would be removed to a national park "as soon as it digests the dog" in about two days.
He said scrub pythons could grow to seven metres and usually ate wallabies, but were also partial to pets they came across in inhabited areas.
A clip of the snake digesting a dog-shaped lump is available on the video sharing website YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06O-_sJ5vJI .