We Interrupt This Convention Coverage for ... When Animals Attack!

Posted by Joshua Holland, AlterNet at 5:00 AM on August 28, 2008.

So, Barack Obama got the Dem nomination. Quite a shocker there.

In other news, the BBC has a story of a brave Rottweiler saving a child from the iron jaws of a marauding pit bull ...

A South African Rottweiler has helped rescue a two-year-old boy who was being mauled by a pit bull terrier.

The pit bull attacked Tshepang Taeli as he was walking with his grandmother in Oakdene, south of Johannesburg.

The dog was dragging the toddler down the road and would not let go, despite being kicked and beaten by residents.

One of the neighbours, Ricky Veludo, came to help and then went to fetch his dog, Blade. "He fought the other dog to free the child," he told a local paper.

"Blade is very protective," Mr Veludo told Die Beeld newspaper.

The boy was then rushed to hospital where he is recovering from bites to his face, legs and stomach.

Rottweilers get a bad rap (as do pit bulls, I should add -- there's no such thing as a bad dog, just bad and/or stupid owners), but they are sweet, loyal and loving creatures. My father's old pooch, Ella, a Rottie, is as devoted and steadfast as a beast can be.

Meanwhile, in Venezuela, a student zoo-keeper might be alive if he had had such a creature at his side. But he didn't, and he was partially eaten by a ten-foot snake ...

A three-metre-long Burmese Python killed a student zookeeper in Caracas last weekend and was caught trying to swallow its dead human prey when horrified coworkers arrived, Venezuela's El Universal newspaper reported Monday.

The other employees of the Caracas zoo had to beat the serpent to make it release the body of 29-year-old Erick Arrieta, whose head it was swallowing.

According to the daily, Arrieta had been working the nightshift alone on Saturday, looking after the reptile section of the zoo.

The university biology student had broken the park's rules by entering the cage holding the snake, which had been donated two months ago and was not on public display, according to the zoo's management.

A snake bite on his arm indicated the python had attacked Arrieta before wrapping itself around him and crushing him to death.

I've always thought slowly running out of oxygen in a stricken submarine was pretty much as terrifying a death as one could endure, but having your head eaten by a ginormous python's got to be right up there.

Tagged as: dogs, snakes

Joshua Holland is an editor and senior writer at AlterNet.