A time to die

It’s 1961 and Ennio Flaiano recounts a story of a sick snake,

An ailing python escapes from a little circus in Rome where he used to perform in the evening together with other beasts. The python makes its way to a garden on the periphery of the city.

Normally, it would be able to eat a few chickens, a rabbit, but there’s something seriously the matter with its stomach and it isn’t hungry. It goes to sleep on top of a wall.

Here it’s discovered by a horrified crowd and - being a crowd- they decide to kill it. But no one dares? A few policemen respond to an urgent summons. How does one kill a python? Call the fire department? Kill it in a dignified way, like hunters?

Afraid of missing it with a rifle shot, they pour a bucket of naphtha over it and toss on a few flaming rags. The python wakes up in time to die amidst the flames.

Ennio cannot help being moved whenever he thinks about this poor snake who after a wandering life as an actor, gets mistaken for a perilous dragon and is killed in a purificatory rite.

In Italy, it isn’t even easy to be a snake.