Preventing Poppy-Picking Pythons In The Park

A British woman living in Hong Kong managed to thwart a plot by one of the reptile minions of the Animal Uprising™. The nefarious scheme involved a poppy-picking python in a local park. Which sounds kind of harmless until you realize that said poppy happens to be the woman's pet pooch.

A British woman fought with a 4.5 metre Burmese python to save her pet dog from being crushed to death on a walking trail in Hong Kong.

Expatriate Catherine Leonard, 41, kicked and punched the snake after seeing it wrap itself around her pet dog, a 20 kg mongrel called Poppy, near her home in the former British colony.

Ms Leonard was walking Poppy and two other dogs on a trail close to a family picnic area in Hong Kong’s rural New Territories last Sunday when the python pounced on Poppy, biting her and coiling itself around her.

After hearing what she described as “a yelping that was like a scream", Ms Leonard, a keen runner who organises amateur marathons, dashed to free the four-year-old dog, kicking and grappling with the snake.

“I’m not sure exactly what I did but I kicked it and I tried to pull Poppy free. The snake was twisted around her, that was the problem,” she said.

Actually, Ms. Leonard, you were lucky. Generally removing a python requires a special tool, the nine-iron. Tasers have also been known to work, but the Animal Uprising™ has been making strides in Taser-proofing their troops. There's always the old stand-by, too: tying the offending snake in a boa knot.