[Stardust]

http://www.themoreheadnews.com/homep...174134943.html

A Clearfield man’s recent encounter with a reptile could pass for a scene from “a cool sci-fi movie.” However, Matt Oesch of Fallin Timber Road said what happened to him was definitely real. Oesch came upon his rabbit cage with one more thing inside than he expected to see. He witnessed a five-foot snake ripping pieces of flesh from his eight-week-old caged, wild cottontail rabbits, he said. “It was mean and evil for a snake to do that,” he said. “I can understand a snake putting something to death and then swallowing it. I can’t see something eating an animal while it’s alive. If that snake was 20 foot long it could rip your arm off.” Oesch grabbed the only thing nearby he could find to distract the snake from his rabbits: a shovel.

“(The snake) chased one rabbit out of the cage, the one it was tearing up the most,” he said. The rabbit got away. The snake turned toward Oesch, he said.

“It spread its head like a cobra,” he said. “It’s got a big hole where it sprays stuff out at you. It was squirting stuff out at me. It wasn’t squirting stuff out at the rabbits.” Oesch said he did the only thing his instincts told him to do. He killed the snake with his shovel. After the killing, Oesch hung the snake from a tree in his yard. “The cat ripped the rabbit meat out of the snake and ate it,” he said. Oesch eventually examined the dead snake’s teeth. He was amazed that they were facing backward. Shortly after his battle with the snake, Oesch informed someone who was doing repair work on his garage door of what had happened.

He explained that the snake had shot a “clear mist” from its mouth...