My neighbor emailed me a picture of a Burmese python that was eating sheep. I find the picture interesting because it shows the teeth these animals have. It brings back vivid memories for me as I was bitten by one that was 15 foot long. When I was a teenager my brother had a little zoo going on. He owned a mountain lion, tiger and three pythons. The smallest was 12 foot and the largest was over 20 foot.
The mountain lion hated everyone except my brother. He could hand feed the thing meat and it would purr like a kitten. However it and I were absolute enemies. I cant tell you how many times that cat and I have got into it for it trying to attack me.
Now the tiger loved everyone, except the mountain lion. I say it had a good judge of character. I had a lot of fun with it. However being over 600 lbs, that made it harder and harder to play with as it got bigger. We had made an outside chain link cage for it with a large metal tub full of water. It loved water and spent a lot of time in the tub. We gave it a radial truck tire to keep it busy but it shredded it in no time. So we gave it a bowling ball thinking that migh last longer. It took it and threw it against the cage making a giant dent in the chain link. That was not a good idea so we took the ball out. It was friendly but if food was around you didnt want to be near it. The demeanor would change to viscious until that food was eaten.
His pythons were kept in a glass cage. The 22 foot one was in a cage by itself because for some reason it did not like the other two snakes. It was not very sociable and was hard to move around seeing it was over 200 lbs. The 12 foot and 15 ones were very sociable and like to hang around people. My little incident happened while my brother was away and I was tasked with feeding the animals. I had done it numerous times. I opened the snake cage and changed their water. As I put the water in and was about to close the cage, the 15 footer struck my hand and started coiling my arm. I pushed the coils off but he kept coiling up as fast as I could push him off. I am not a panicky person and realized that as long as I keep him on my arm and away from my ribs, I am in no life threat. So I let the snake coil most of itself on my arm and lifted him out of the cage. The 160 lbs snake seem to bear no problem for me at that moment weight wise. I wanted to get him out of the cage so the other one would not attack seeing I was bleeding like crazy and it might smell it.
I lowered the snake on the ground and began pushing the coils off before he snapped my arm in half. By this time the snake had realized it made a mistake and was no longer on the attack. However it was trying to unhinge itself from my hand. I had to give it some slack since the teeth are barred back to let him push forward to release me. As soon as he did I ran to the sink and started washing off the blood pouring out the holes in my hand. I poured some alcohol on it which I was about to use to get the snake off if it had not released me. That was some major pain. After bandaging myself up, I put the snake back in the cage.
I learned from then on to wake the snakes and irritate them a little to make sure they are not in hunting mode when cleaning their cage. That is one thing about exotic animals, you will get hurt someday. Not if, when.
All the snakes eventually got sick and died simply because Houston, Texas is not the climate they are used to. My brother had kept his two cats at a large cat preserve till 1993 when a major Houston flood occurred and all the cats in the facility started swimming out as the water rose over the fences. Police in boats shot them all.
I miss the snakes and the tiger mostly. Not that cougar though.
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