Taxonomy
Adversaries — predators of serpents
5 entries
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Book V
De Tomaso Mangusta
The mongoose. Named, allegedly, as an insult, and shaped like an apology for it.
Mangusta is Italian for mongoose: the small, fast, faintly rabid carnivore famous for one thing, which is killing cobras. Alejandro de Tomaso built…
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Book V
The Snake and the Mongoose
Two drag racers invented a rivalry, sold it to a toy company, and changed how sport is funded
Don Prudhomme was called the Snake. Tom McEwen called himself the Mongoose specifically so there would be someone for the Snake to fight. Then…
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Book V
Plymouth Road Runner
Named after a cartoon, which was named after a bird, which genuinely does kill rattlesnakes
Chrysler paid Warner Bros. fifty thousand dollars for the name and ten thousand more for a horn that said beep beep. The actual bird runs down…
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Book V
Apollo Intensa Emozione
Named for the god who killed the Python and then took its oracle for himself
Apollo’s first recorded act on reaching Delphi was to kill the serpent that lived there. He then established his oracle on the spot and named its…
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Book V
Aspark Owl
Silent, nocturnal, and arrives without a sound — which is precisely the problem for a snake
An electric hypercar from Osaka with four motors, roughly two thousand horsepower, and a name belonging to the one predator a snake genuinely cannot…