[marketheal]

Python joins traffic jam in Russian city: report

Russians stuck in a traffic jam watched in astonishment as a two-metre-long (6.6-foot) python slithered into a neighbouring car, RussianSkip related content news agency Interfax said Tuesday.



The snake had apparently escaped from the home of its owner in Samara, a southern city on the Volga, when it joined the traffic on Monday, the agency said citing zoo officials. "During a traffic jam on Novo-Sadovaya street a python slipped into the engine of a foreign-made car.

The passengers of neighbouring vehicles saw this and alerted the driver," the zoo management was quoted as saying. The zoo sent specialists to retrieve the heavy-set reptile -- a rare breed of reticulated python -- but the provenance of the animal had them baffled until his owner came to claim the pet a day later. "The python was in bad shape.

Lucky that there was traffic, or he would have been killed," a zoo employee told the agency. Zoo keepers were able to confirm the identity of the python's owner as he could name missing patches of scales on his beloved pet, it said. The reticulated python are native to Southeast Asia and can grow to be over nine metres long as adults.