Snake swallows electric blanket

KETCHUM, Idaho - It took surgery to save a 3 1/2-metre pet snake after it swallowed an entire electric blanket, including its electrical cord and control box.

The blanket must have become tangled up in the snake's rabbit dinner, owner Karl Beznoska said. He said he kept the blanket in the cage of Houdini, a 27-kilogram Burmese python, for warmth.

"Somehow, he was able to unplug the electric cord," Beznoska said Wednesday. "He at least wasn't hooked up to the power. It might have been pretty warm there."

Veterinarian Karsten Fostvedt conducted a two-hour operation on the python Tuesday, and said afterward, "The prognosis is great."

Fostvedt said specialists at the University of California-Davis School of Veterinary Medicine told him it probably would have taken Houdini six hours to swallow the blanket and the snake probably would have died without the operation.

X-rays showed the tangle of the blanket's wiring extending through about 2 1/2 metres of the python's digestive tract. The surgery to remove it took a 46-centimetre incision.

Neither Fostvedt nor fellow veterinarian Barry Rathfon had operated on a snake before. "We just basically called a couple of specialists and they told us where to go in," Fostvedt said.

He said it would take several days for Houdini's anesthesia to wear off because snakes have such slow metabolism.

Houdini has been with Beznoska for 16 years, and is a popular show-tell guest in local schools.