This evening, I watched part of a film about the largest prehistoric snake; was based on the python type, made 48ft long, and eat enormous versions of the then current gigantic croc. They say.
They also said that a shipment of Burmese pythons escaped in Florida during a storm some years ago, and there are now thousands of them in the Everglades, pythons, not storms, though I guess there are plenty of those, too. It certainly gave raining lessons in Hollywood.
It's funny: when I was around eight, we moved to India for some years, and I used to run around the rocks and wasteland behind our house, armed with a catapult. (I was quite good with it.) Never saw a snake though cobras were around: there would be skins up on our upper terraces, brought along by passing birds, I hope. There were really large black scorpions, often on the insides of the window ledges, and I'd estimate them to be about six or seven inches long or so; they didn't bug me either. But then, after we returned to Britain, I discovered that I had a new dread of such things. Thank goodness I didn't suffer from it when younger. It totally destroyed any pleasure I might otherwise have had, many years later, from shooting in Africa. A nightmare.
People.
Rob C