A Madison woman at a meeting of a local book club got a little more than she bargained for by taking a python out of its terrarium last week, when the python bit her on the face and wouldn't let go.

Annie, a 17-year-old ball python about 4 feet long, attached herself to the right cheek of the 31-year-old woman and wouldn't disengage until the python's owner came home and was able to get the snake off the woman's face.

"She just wanted to hold her," said Madison police spokesman Joel DeSpain in a news release. "She apparently had prior experience handling snakes and had no reason to believe she was putting herself in danger."

The ball python is a smaller species of python and is a fairly common snake to have as a house pet, nomally docile and prone to eating small mammals such as rats or mice.

The snake is also known as the royal python, a serpent that Egyptian Queen Cleopatra supposedly wore on her wrist. (It's not poisonous, so this asp couldn't have been responsible for the queen's demise.)

The woman belongs to a book club that was meeting around 7 p.m. at a member's house on Jan. 19 on the city's north side.

Once Annie was removed from the woman's face, the python went back into the terrarium and the woman went to get the puncture wounds looked at.

"It was sort of a happy ending," DeSpain said. "The women ended up with no scars and no lasting emotional trauma."

Max Brooks, Emmy award winner and author of the bestselling books "The Zombie Survival Guide" and "World War Z," will be speaking at UW Oshkosh on Wednesday. B-Side editor, Katie Holliday, talked with Brooks about zombies, his books and what students can expect if they come to the event.

 

Katie Holliday: So what got you interested in applying all of (these survival guide tips) to zombies specifically?

 

Max Brooks: I was always scared of them, and around the time Y2K happened, when the fear of Y2K was building, there were disaster preparedness manuals coming out. And I thought, "What about one about zombies?" And I went looking for one, to read it, and no one had the free time, I guess, to write one. So nobody was writing, and I have the free time, so I sat down and wrote it. (Referring to the survival guide book)

KH: Is this what you'll be discussing on Wednesday? What can students expect to hear when they come to the event?

 

MB: When they walk in, they're going to learn how to survive a zombie apocalypse.

 

KH: So basically your book in real life?

 

MB: Essentially my book translated for the stage.

 

KH: So your book has a lot of real-world application.

 

MB: It does, and my second book is much more of a geo-political message of a global meltdown through a zombie war. I'll be given a tour at the CDC in Atlanta; they understand that zombies are a great way to talk about disaster preparedness.

 

KH: Did you have anything else you'll like to include?

 

MB: I think the most important part of my lectures are the Q and A sessions, because I find the questions most interesting, and they're usually all zombie questions. I'm very interested in what the students in Oshkosh are going to ask.

 

            Brooks will be speaking on Wednesday at 7 p.m. in the Reeve Union ballroom. For more information about Brooks, visit www.maxbrooks.com.

The fifth challenge put forth by Iron Cupcake Madison brought bakers and cupcake consumers together on Sunday, June 26, at Basie's Restaurant on Madison's far west side, with the cooks whipping up a cornucopia of mini-cupcakes, all for the benefit of the Literacy Network.

The theme for the event was children's books, and bakers took inspiration from all sorts of children's favorites when creating their tiny tasty treasures.