Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 October 1894 — AN ENORMOUS AFRICAN SNAKE. [ARTICLE]

AN ENORMOUS AFRICAN SNAKE.

Captured After Swallowing a Small Ox, and Put into a Cage. London News. The colony es Natal, in South Africa, abounds in boa constrictors and pythons. While they dp not attack inen, they are especially destructive )f sheep, cattle and oxen, and for this reason parties are formed by hunters and natives to burn the bush and forest in order to exterminate the pests. I Some of the soldiers at Pietermaritzburg were recently informed by a party of neigboring Zulus of the whereabouts of a huge python that had been destroying their oxen'. The Soldiers, with 200 natives, started off to capture the snake, and Having located it, the forest was fired for ibout a mile roundabout, an enormous pit having been previously dug in toward the center of the inclosed space. What with the burning brush and the shouts of the excited Kaffirs, thev soon drove the reptile toward the pit, where, closing in on him, they forced him into it. The python proved to be of “normous size, being thirty-two feet iong and forty-one inches in circumference. It appeared to be quite stupid or dazed, having just eaten a voting ox that had been let into the In closure.

An enormous cage with iron bars half way down the front haying been constructed, the snake was got out of the pit and taken to Maritzburg in the cage. Here he is kept on exhibition at the barracks, and is fed twice a week, two Kaffir goats at each meal. It will not eat anything that has been already killed for it, preferring-to kill its food for itself. The goats are thrust through a s nail loor at the end of the cage a ive, when, fixing its great eyes upon them, the snake suddenly lunges forward and crushes them in its powerful folds. After covering them with 1 thick slime about an inch deep before swallowing, it flattens them out by squeezing them and then devours them almost at a gulp. After this the python goes to sleep and does not awake until it is time to be fed again. A gentleman at Maritzburg owns 1 python that has been confined in a cage for over thirteen months. During this period the snake has not eaten a mouthful of food of any kind, although every conceivable delicacy )f likely snake diet, such as frogs, birds, rats and meat, has been set to tempt its appetite its fast seems not to be broken, and the owner has at la t abandoned the idea of coaxing the colly prisoner with food. It Irinks a very small quantity of water. In a dormant state this fasting would be better understood, for In this state reptiles of this description have been known to exist for oeriods of eighteen months, or even three years.