Lunch Is On Me

Young woman plays with a albino burmese python

I SAW A NEWS STORY THE OTHER DAY datelined out of South Africa. It appears that a young American woman was visiting a Wild Animal Park – one of those places where you drive through the area where the animals reside and you take pictures. She didn’t follow the rules and ended up as the Blue Plate Special for a pride of lions.

The rules of the park stated that visitors must keep the doors locked and the windows up. The young American woman didn’t think the rules applied to her and a lion pulled her through the open window and – well, you can imagine it from there.

It is incidents like this and the problem of large Pythons and African Lizards setting up housekeeping in Florida that make me wonder:

“What in the heck is wrong with you people?”

These Burmese Pythons and African Monitor Lizards didn’t get to Florida on The Love Boat. “Snakes on a Plane” was just a movie, right?

I guess that there are people who are not content to have a dog, cat or parakeet for a pet. They feel the need to get something that, given the opportunity, could eat them. Does having a crocodile splashing around in your bathtub get your adrenaline pumping? Does keeping a bear cub in your fifth floor apartment fulfill some Davy Crockett fantasy life for you?

Several times a year we see news items about some yutz who suddenly realizes that the six foot alligator he has in the tub is looking at him differently. Then the fool tries to dump the animal into the wading pool at the city park.

This is how any number of Urban Legends get started.

Down in Florida there are twenty-foot long Pythons gobbling down family pets and probably some New Jersey Mobsters. These critters (the Pythons) were sold as sweet little six inch babies.

“Awwww, he’s so cuuuute. I’m going to love him and squeeze him and call him George.”

Then, all of a sudden, George is longer than the guy’s car and has swallowed the neighbor’s kid. Soon after we have another Python in the Everglades meeting up with other discarded “Pets,” breeding and comparing menu notes.

I actually knew a woman, supremely well educated, who had a twenty foot long Boa Constrictor as a “pet.” She purchased a long display case from a jewelry store that was closing and kept it in her home.

To feed the snake she opened an account with a scientific laboratory supply company to keep her larder well stocked with white rats. It seems that the snake would only eat living things. No frozen rats would suffice.

My friend told me that at dinnertime she would grab a rat and slam it’s head on the corner of the table and then toss the unconscious tidbit into the display case for the snake. Showtime!

This all took place in her lovely home – in the middle of London, England.

True Story

I don’t even want to talk about the woman who’s sweet and gentle Chimpanzee ate off her neighbor’s face. Remember that one from just a couple of years ago?

With all of the hundreds of thousands of dogs and cats that are put down every year there are still these freakin’ lunatics out there who think it is cool and sensible to keep wild animals in their homes. There are members of my own family I won’t let through the front door, so I’m certainly not going to bring a wild, meat eating, predator into our midst. If you ever met my cousin Phil you wouldn’t even question me about it.

It is things like this that make me “Go Geezer” and shake my head.

Oh, well.

I wonder how Siegfried and Roy are doing these days?

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