The image of a snake eating its own tail is a pretty famous metaphor, but a snake getting stuck inside a continuous loop of its own skin is one we haven’t heard before. According to Sploid, this Stimson’s Python at the Alice Springs Reptile Center in Australia spent over three hours wriggling around the loop he had created for himself before finally figuring out how to escape.

When snakes shed their skin a few times each year they’re usually able to do so without incident. This snake, however, somehow managed to find himself in a Sisyphean nightmare. The non-venomous creature eventually broke a hole in the side of the dead skin trap and used that as his exit route. As a photo posted to the center's Facebook page showed, he survived the ordeal unscathed.

[h/t Sploid]

All images courtesy of Alice Springs Reptile Center via Facebook.

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This article was originally published on www.mentalfloss.com as A Shedding Snake Trapped Itself in a Loop of Its Own Skin.