Scott's Random Thought For The Day (Giant Snake Update)



I've engaged in a little web fu, and I think I know where the giant snake story came from. It appears to have originated in an Indonesian paper called Suara Medeka. There the story of the snake's capture included a few extra details that were neglected in the AP version. For example, it took 65 people to capture the snake, and it was originally 70 feet long, though twenty feet were lost because the snake had eaten a rotted deer. No, that doesn't make sense to me either.

It looks like somebody at the paper was given a boring story to write about some rustic zoo putting a large snake on display, and he or she decided to embellish it to make it more interesting. Then when people started showing up at the zoo looking for the 50 foot long snake, the snake's owner/handler began making up his own tall tales. That's my best guess, unless I learn Bahasa Indonesia so I can read the original stories myself.

Posted: Mon - January 5, 2004 at      

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