Vets operated to save the life of a 12ft python - after it swallowed an entire electric blanket, along with the electrical chord and control box.
Houdini, a Burmese python, usually slept on the blanket at home in Ketchum, Idaho.

But owner Karl Beznoska believes it must have become entangled in the 60lb snake's rabbit dinner - and ended up in its stomach.

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

Vet Karsten Fostvedt conducted a two-hour operation on the python and said afterwards: "The prognosis is great."

Mr 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.
The snake probably would have died without the operation, he said.

X-rays showed the tangle of the blanket's wiring extending through about 8ft of the python's digestive tract. The surgery to remove it took an 18-inch incision.