The Snake Who Tried to Swallow His Owner

The Snake Who Tried to Swallow His Owner

It all started out with a tale my mom narrated to me over the phone. She had heard it from my uncle who in turn heard it from a friend of his. This friend claimed that he used to own a pet python and one day all of a sudden the python stopped eating the food the owner would serve him. Not only did he stop consuming food but at night the python started to come onto the owner's bed and sleep in a straight position parallel to him unlike his usual curled up sleeping position.

The owner didn't take too much notice of it immediately, but after this continued for a few days, he decided to check with a vet about the python's behaviour since he feared it might have taken ill. Much to his bewilderment the vet asked him to get rid of the snake immediately as his take was that the python was starving itself in preparation to swallow the owner. He also said that the snake's practice of sleeping parallel to him was in order to measure the owner and make sure it was capable of swallowing him!

The story left me shocked. I couldn't fathom why anyone would want to have a python as a pet in the first place. Besides this I found the possibility of a snake swallowing a human being extremely creepy and kept wondering if such a thing has ever happened anywhere in the world. That's what prompted me to do a quick online search. This is what the search revealed –

The story of a snake starving and sleeping next to his owner with the intention of making him his next meal is actually a popular urban legend, a rumour or myth passed on through word of mouth and of late through the Internet and email.

The python story is just one of many such tales that we hear from a 'friend of a friend' and take to be true.

Wikipedia defines an urban legend as:

…a form of modern folklore consisting of apocryphal stories believed by their tellers to be true. As with all folklore and mythology, the designation suggests nothing about the story's factuality or falsehood, but merely that it is in non-institutional circulation, exhibits variation over time, and carries some significance that motivates the community in preserving and propagating it.