Snakes

PLAIN CITY -- One of Plain City's best-known and most-beloved celebrity residents has passed away. Monty Python, 30, was a muscular 70 pounds and measured 10 feet 6 inches tall, uh, long.

YANGON, Myanmar -- Forestry officials in central Myanmar have seized nearly 10,000 snakes in 400 crates that were to be smuggled to China.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A pet python that underwent surgery after being bitten by a Sacramento, Calif., man is “looking a ton better,” Sacramento animal control officials said Saturday.

LOGAN -- A Logan hospital is reporting an increase in rattlesnake sightings and bites this summer.

BUSHNELL, Fla. -- Sheryl Hare never trusted Gypsy.

The Marion County, Fla., grandmother said she so feared that the 8-foot-6-inch Burmese python would hurt her tiny granddaughter, Shaianna, that she offered $500 for the pet reptile from her daughter weeks before it strangled the child.

In opening remarks to jurors Tuesday, Assistant State Attorney Pete Magrino said Shaianna's mother, Jaren Hare, 21, and her boyfriend, Charles "Jason" Darnell, 34, both charged with manslaughter, third-degree murder and child neglect, ignored the risks posed by the snake, which had repeatedly escaped its tank.

REXBURG, Idaho  — They slithered behind the walls at night and released foul-smelling musk into the drinking water. And they were so numerous that Ben Sessions once killed 42 in a single day.

Shortly after buying their dream home, Sessions and his wife discovered it was infested with thousands of garter snakes. For the next three months, their growing family lived as if in a horror movie. More than a year after they abandoned the property, the home briefly went back on the market, and they fear it could someday attract another unsuspecting buyer.

The five-bedroom house stands on nearly two pastoral acres in rural Idaho, about 125 miles southwest of Yellowstone National Park. Priced at less than $180,000, it seemed like a steal.

But the young couple soon learned they would be sharing the home with reptiles at least two feet long that had crawled into seemingly every crevice.