Quote of the week

… he felt Kaa’s back grow bigger and broader below him as the huge python puffed himself out, hissing with the noise of a sword drawn from a steel scabbard. ‘I have seen all the dead seasons,’ Kaa said at last, ‘and the great trees and the old elephants, and the rocks that were bare and sharp-pointed ere the moss grew. Art thou still alive, Manling?’

This is from “Red Dog” in The Second Jungle Book

The Seonee wolf pack are threatened by a great troop of dholes, red dogs from the Deccan, who have slaughtered a wolf family, and are invading their territory.

Mowgli has asked Kaa, the ancient rock python, one of the oldest creatures in the Jungle, to help find a way of defeating them. Kaa has been thinking back over all he has seen and known since the day he came from the egg.