Snake befriends hamster dinner

TOKYO -- For one snake, dinner became an unexpected roommate.\nZookeepers at Tokyo's Mutsugoro Okoku zoo were stunned to find that a 3.5-inch dwarf hamster they had offered as a tasty meal to their four-foot rat snake instead became friends.\n"I've never seen anything like it," said keeper Kazuya Yamamoto.\nZookeepers presented the hamster, named Gohan, which means "meal" in Japanese, to the snake, called Aochan, in October, after the reptile refused to eat frozen mice.\nThe snake eventually developed an appetite for frozen rodents but has so far shown no signs of gobbling up Gohan.