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Somewhere inside this snake is the family dog, nothing more than an evening meal for
the 16-foot long python in Queensland, Australia. He swallowed the beloved pet, a Terrier Chihuahua
cross, in one go. Right in front of its owners, a boy and a girl aged 5 and 7 and their mother,
who attempted in vain to stop the snake by hitting it with a chair. This, after they
discovered the python, with a tail and furry legs dangling out of his mouth. Stuart Douglass
of the Australian Venom Zoo came to the rescue, but it was too late.
"We were called basically. A lady was quite concerned about her dog being eaten by a 5
to 6 metre scrub python. Obviously, we went straight away, and it had consumed the dog.
We took a number of photos, and then we moved the snake back here to the zoo. The reason
it wasn't released straight into the wild is because the... Well, it couldn't be released
because there was a huge amount of food there, and it could do quite a bit of damage to the
snake moving it." Apparently, increasing housing development
in Queensland has displaced the python's natural food source, the local wallabies. So the hungry
snakes have moved on to domestic cats and dogs. But pet owners don't have to worry for
another couple of days. The dog will take at least 48 hours to digest.