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Python eats pet dog

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.

The five-metre python struck on Monday night on the verandah of the Peric family home at Kuranda in Queensland. Family members threw chairs at the snake to scare it off but it was undeterred. The boy and girl, Ethan and Talia aged 5 and 7, watched as the scrub python devoured their silky terrier-Chihuahua crossbreed.

“Actually watching it unfold before your eyes was pretty gut-wrenching,” Daniel Peric said. “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 .

“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 a snake expert to try to save their dog but by the time he arrived only the dog’s back legs and tail were visible. The expert 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, the expert 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.

Pythons squeeze their prey to death before swallowing it whole. The dog would have been suffocated within minutes.

Removing the half-swallowed dog could have harmed or even killed the python, because dogs have sharp teeth and claws that could do the snake internal damage if it were wrenched out.

A clip of the snake digesting a dog-shaped lump is available on the video sharing website YouTube. — Agencies

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