7/20/2006: Python eats electric blanket
 

http://cellar.org/2006/pythonsurgery.jpg

Official caption: Karl Beznoska's 12-foot Burmese python, Houdini, is attended to on an operating table, Tuesday, July 18, 2006, in Ketchum, Idaho. It took surgery to save the python after it swallowed an entire queen-size electric blanket _ with the electrical cord and control box. 'The prognosis is great,' veterinarian Karsten Fostvedt said after Tuesday's two-hour operation.

http://cellar.org/2006/pythonxray.jpg

Facts culled from other news stories on the event:

- The blanket was in the cage for warmth; Beznoska thinks it got caught up in the snake's regular food.
- It probably took the snake 6 hours to eat the thing, and it took them 2 hours to take it out.
- The blanket was lodged in about 8 feet of the 12-foot snake; the incision to remove it was a foot and a half.
- It had been plugged in. :eek: Somehow the snake unplugged it.

Maybe Houdini just wanted to impress Houdinette with some Electric Lady Land.

Get this Motherf*&%#ing blanket out of my Motherf*&%#ing snake!

Funny++

http://us.movies1.yimg.com/movies.ya...__jackson2.jpg

I wonder if it didn't smell and feel (temp) like food.

And they say Python isn't bloated. Just look at it...

what a waste of surgical skills and money when 20% of americans have no medical coverage at all!

I don't think that the veterinarian took time off from treating any human patients.

Not for long. That rumbling sound you hear is the uninsured 20% of Americans moving to San Francisco. Actually, it could be more like 10% of Americans and 20% of the people who live in America.

However, there is a bright side. With the knowledge the medical community has gained from this horrible tragedy, the cost of treating humans who swallow electric blankets will surely decline - a benefit we can all enjoy.

Do you not have any pets, then? Or, if so, do you just let them die when they are unwell? Or is pet ownership a crime against humanity as well?

That X-Ray is amazing! It looks like something out of a sci fi moving. Are circular ribs? What's all that wavy stuff that looks so cool? I can't figure out of they're part of the blanket or part of the snake.

I would imagine they are the resistive heating wires inside the blanket.

That xray is, indeed, way cool! I bet those wavy lines are part of the blanket. Think about it, an electric blanket has lots of wires that deliver the heat. With it squished up inside the snake's stomach, those wires just might look like that.

And I agree, that it's fine to spend $$$ on a pet's health.

Parallel circle looking parts are ribs, not really circles, of course, more like "C"s with the open part along the belly. Wavy parts running mostly lengthwise are the heating elements woven through the fabric of the electric blanket, then wadded/twisted up into what you see. The doctor's pen is pointing to the control box for the blanket.

Anyone have a python? I'm wondering how long it took to eat this thing -- and where the owner was.