PHUKET: Stories about pythons have become a tabloid staple on Phuket so it was only a matter of time before one slithering critter set its sights on the Governor's mansion.

Today the Kusoldharm Foundation python team got a call to Phuket's top house in Phuket City's administrative zone, after a 30 kilo python consumed a chicken that, in other circumstances, could have ended up on the plate of Governor Nisit Jansomwong.

One of the governor's staffers saw the python making a getaway rather slowly across the grass after consuming a chicken in the hen house.

Kusoldharm workers bagged the python, with its telltale extended belly, and told the governor's staff the well-fed snake would be released in the jungle at Chalong, in southern Phuket.

Governor Nisit missed all the excitement. He was in Bangkok today for meetings.

Phuketwan has been unable to confirm rumors that Phuket's tabloid journalists carry a number of pythons in the trunks of office vehicles and release them whenever the newspaper develops a space that must be filled by a python story.