The woman raised a python named Saffron at home. The yellow python had been with her for three years and quickly became a pet.

Her family winced: “Be careful, it’s a predator.” But the girl only smiled: “It’s tame. It loves me and would never harm me.”

However, after some time, the snake began to behave strangely.

The first alarming oddities began unnoticed.

Saffron stopped eating. At night, it would crawl out of its cage and stretch out alongside the woman — its head at its shoulder, its tail at its ankles. Sometimes, it would wrap itself loosely around her waist and freeze, as if counting its ribs.

During the day, she’d choose the cool floor near her bed, where she walked barefoot, and lie there for hours, the tip of her tail barely moving, her gaze fixed precisely on the rise and fall of a person’s chest.

There were also muffled “hugs”: the python would crawl up to her throat and linger under her collarbone, touching her skin with its forked tongue. The woman joked that it was a kiss.

But at night, she woke up more and more often, feeling the weight on her chest.

And when one night she was awakened by the snake’s sharp hiss, she knew it was time to see a veterinarian.

And that’s when she learned something terrifying about the python, and finally understood how dangerous it is to keep a wild animal at home.

The doctor leisurely weighed the python, palpated it, and listened to its stories of nocturnal “cuddling” and refusal to eat.

“You see,” he finally said, “this isn’t affection. Large pythons starve and stretch along their owner’s body—a typical complex before attempting to swallow large prey. The python is measuring whether the size is appropriate. Coiling is a strangulation rehearsal. You have a mature, strong female. She’s strong enough to cut off your breathing. It’s rare, but such cases do happen. In short, your python wanted to swallow you. There’s only one recommendation: strict isolation, a change in diet, and—preferably—transfer the pet to a specialized facility. Today.”

The words struck a chill. That evening, the girl sat on the edge of the bed and watched Safran slowly slide across the sheets. At some point, the python lay exactly as it had in that photo: coiled around the sleeping woman, only this time the woman was awake.

The woman carefully picked up the snake, returned it to the terrarium, clicked the latch, and sat down on the floor next to it.

In the morning, she called the city reptile center. Safran was taken that afternoon—to a spacious enclosure, with experienced staff and proper food.