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Python "girl": member of rural family for 9 years
By Guan Xiaomeng (Chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2006-01-15 09:35
Deep one summer night in a rural family of South China's Hainan Province,
while seemingly everyone was in a deep sleep, a thief stole into the house.
However, hardly had he stepped over the doorsill when he was bitten by
something. Was it the family watchdog? Absolutely not: It was a huge python!
Was the python a wild one who happened to creep into the house and came
across the thief? On the contrary, the female python is a member of the family
and was on night duty. She is not a newcomer at all -- for 9 years she has been
in the family, 3 years longer than the family's first child.
Huang Kaining, a rural man living in the city of Qionghai in Hainan, never
expected that what happened 9 years ago would turn into a huge "gift".
Nine years ago, Huang was working in the family pinang (a kind of
spiky-covered fruit) garden when he saw a baby python lying in the bush and with
tail injured. Huang took the little poor thing home and cured her injury.
Now the python, given the name of A Cai, has grown into a huge python "girl",
4 meters long and more than 50 kilograms weight. She creeps on the sofa, bed,
and everywhere else in the house. However, Huang said everyone in his family
feels like they can't live without the python. But case didn't used to be that.
"At first my mother disagreed with the python's stay at first," said Huang.
"She just couldn't bear a huge snake in the house." Neighbors also threw objects
at A Cai for fear she might hurt their children.
Though not poisonous, pythons are very aggressive animals able to swallow
other animals that are several times bigger than themselves. They have good
digestive systems and can eat an animal without leaving any bones or (in the
cases of eating humans) clothes.
Despite that, Huang has stuck to keeping the python.
"I trained her into a mild python," Huang said. As a result, now A Cai gets
on very well with human beings. "I let her creep freely in the house in daytime
instead of keeping her in the cage, so she is becoming more and more mild among
human beings."
Huang and his son
play with the python with the python coiling round Huang's neck.
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Huang's mother began to love the python "girl" after she bit the thief out of
the house. Sometimes the old lady comes to pat the python's cold skin when Huang
and his children play with her.
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