Mel Gibson 'saves group from snake attack'

(Belfast Telegraph) Mel Gibson reportedly saved a group of people from a deadly snake while on a cleansing retreat...

He recently spent some time at the Miraval Resort & Spa in Arizona, which is when the incident occurred.

"Mel was on a cleansing retreat? and was on a five-mile hike into the desert mountains with eight other guests when he suddenly heard an ominous rattle he knew well as a long-time resident of the Malibu mountains! A split second later, a huge rattlesnake slithered onto the trail and went into attack mode. Instantly, Mel shielded three women next to him with his body, yelling, 'Stay back!'" a source told National Enquirer.

The serpent was six feet long and Mel's companions were reportedly frozen with fear. One managed to hand the actor a tree branch, which he used to fend off the snake.

"Mel charged the rattlesnake, yelling at the top of his lungs, and beat it back off the trail. Then he stood guard, keeping the snake at bay while everyone moved quickly past the danger point," the source added. "When all were safely distant, the group gave Mel a rousing cheer."

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Would you eat this Albino Burmese Python? It's sweet and tasty; seriously!

By David Strege at GrindTV

The photo of this Albino Burmese Python looks so real, Francesca Pitcher of North Star Cakes in Kent, U.K., was prompted to add this tagline: "****I DO NOT SELL SNAKES****. This photo is of a snake CAKE made to look like an Amelanistic Burmese Python for a birthday party."

Yes, the snake is a fake. It's a fake snake cake...

According to the U.K. Daily Mail, Pitcher's now-6-year-old daughter, Claudia, who loves reptiles, wanted a spooky-themed birthday party. She wanted something that would scare her friends. Pitcher suggested a snake cake.

She regretted that idea immediately, and for good reason. Pitcher has a snake phobia.

From the U.K. Daily Mail:

'At first I couldn't even look at the images of them online but as I kept researching them I realised they weren't so bad and had quite beautiful patterns.

'Once I had got over my phobia I just cracked on with it...'

Over the course of three days, Pitcher spent 12 hours baking and shaping sponge layers, using "a white chocolate fondant with special dye to make the skin and replicate the distinctive markings of the dangerous snake," according to the Daily Mail... (continued)

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Monster titanoboa snake invades New York

By Claudine Zap | The Upshot

New York commuters arriving at Grand Central Station were greeted by a monstrous sight: a 48-foot-long, 2,500-pound titanoboa snake.

The good news: It's not alive. Anymore. But the full-scale replica of the reptile -- which made its first appearance at the commuter hub -- is intended, as Smithsonian spokesperson Randall Kremer happily admitted, to "scare the daylights out of people" -- actually has a higher calling: to "communicate science to a lot of people." The scientifically scary-accurate model will go a long way toward that: If this snake slithered by you, it would be waist-high and measure the length of a school bus. Think of it as the T-rex of snakes.

This newly discovered species, known as titanoboa (yes, the words "titan" and "boa" are in there), which lived 65 million years ago, is about to have its close-up. The New York City appearance is promoting an exhibit at the Smithsonian Institute's National Museum of Natural History in D.C. opening on March 30, which ties in to a TV special on the Smithsonian Channel called, what else, "Titanoboa: Monster Snake." The two-hour program airs April 1.

Remains of the titanoboa were first discovered in a Colombian coal mine in 2005. One of the researchers specializing in the Paleocene era, the time after the death of the dinosaurs, was Jonathan Bloch. A vertebrate paleontologist from University of Florida's Museum of Natural History, the scientist led multiple expeditions, along with Carlos Jaramillo of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. The team collected remains from the mine, which resulted in the find. Together with ancient-snake expert Jason Head of the University of Nebraska, they named the world's largest snake Titanoboa.

Speaking on the phone to Yahoo! News, Bloch admitted that when the team was first collecting the skeletons of Titanoboa, he didn't immediately understand what he had found until he returned to the lab. With the help of his students, he was able to identify the fossils as snakes, just much, much bigger than the ones of today. He described the enormous vertebrae as "sort of like if you saw a mouse skull the size of rhino skull."

The predator, which is related to a boa constrictor but actually behaved like an anaconda, lived in water and fed on fish, other titanoboas, and crocodiles (very, very large crocodiles).

If this sounds like Hollywood's next blockbuster, Bloch noted that this time around, truth is actually bigger than fiction: The predator from the movie "Anaconda," for one, is not as big as titanoboa. "This is really an example where reality and the past have exceeded the imaginations of Hollywood."

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The Pastoral Fun Never Stops

• The Pastoral Fun Never Stops