Venomous cobra retained to patrol ugly expensive shoes at Harrods

Harrods, the London department store, rented a poisonous cobra to do guard duty at the launch of a pair of £62,000 sandals, proving that tacky displays of wealth and the herpephilia are not mutually exclusive.

A spokeswoman for Harrods admitted that the cobra had been hired strictly for Monday's launch of the shoe collection.
"The snake has now been returned to its owner," she said.

Link (Thanks, Virtual Tours!)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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Anonymous

Judging from context, yes. Yes he did.
Anonymous

What’s the point of posting a link to an article that describes something you want to SEE but has NO PICTURES.
dculberson

Ltst nws: txt grmr fnd 2 b sgn of stpdty
Dan Wineman

Wow. They could have gotten in serious trouble for this. In the US it’s pretty well established that you can’t use deadly force to protect property. Here’s a Wikipedia article claiming that UK common law agrees.
strider_mt2k

You appear to be suffering from irritable vowel syndrome.
Anonymous

Why do so many comments have no vowels in them? Is it some new internet trend I am not aware of? Is it something in my browser?
Jennifer Emick

Obviously it wasn’t for protection, but a silly publicity stunt. And afaik, it’s only illegalk when deadly…the threat is probably legal.
jmcnichols

Yes, it’s a ridiculous product in the first place, but for its audience, it seems like a clever bit of publicity and advertising to me.
halfvenus

The cobra being foreshadowing of the pain the shoes will cause?

I lIke vOwEls
Anonymous

rn’t 90% f BNG BNG psts bt tcky dsplys f wlth… mn…gdgts?
Anonymous

Thank you No. 4: Some might whine it’s semantic but “Venomous” is indeed the more correct identifier.
Anonymous

Dn’s nly mstk: th Fyds
Steven

the shoes aren’t //that// hideous.
alright so a little, kind of, but still.
strider_mt2k

Sources say that the snake had a vested interest in this duty, as several pairs of the expensive footwear were made from close relatives.

Upon completion of this important task, the cobra quickly joined the ranks of those it had guarded, although it is rumored by those close to the situation that they will be 10% off in a coming sale next week.
Teresa Nielsen Hayden/Moderator

Anonymous #8, it’s neither a new dialect nor your browser. I took the vowels out of those messages. Most people can read disemvowelled text, though it takes some effort. What they don’t do is read it automatically.

Comment #1 was a cheap shot. I feel no guilt about disemvowelling announcements that Boing Boing is crap or that it’s boring, because someone who genuinely thought that wouldn’t be reading BB in the first place. It’s just attitudinizing, it’s unpleasant, and it has no other interesting content. Why should the rest of us have to read it?

The second comment had absolutely nothing to do with the entry. I think it may be spam.

And so forth and so on. If someone thinks they’ve been unjustly disemvowelled, I’m open to argument. If they just re-post the same comment, I disemvowel that one, too.
Anonymous

Did you mean “venomous”?
bloggo

62,000 pound sandals?
OOOOooooo……….