Kaa

For other uses, see Kaa (disambiguation).

Kaa
Kaa (left), as illustrated in the 1895 edition of The Two Jungle Books
First appearance	"Kaa's Hunting"
Last appearance	"The Spring Running"
Created by	Rudyard Kipling
Information
Species	Python molurus
Gender	Male

Kaa is a fictional and exceptionally long Python molurus from the Mowgli stories written by Rudyard Kipling. Kaa is one of Mowgli's mentors and friends. He, Baloo and Bagheera sing for Mowgli "The Outsong" of the jungle. First introduced in the story "Kaa's Hunting" in The Jungle Book, Kaa is a huge and powerful snake, more than a hundred years old and still in his prime. Bagheera and Baloo enlist Kaa's help to rescue Mowgli when the man-cub is captured by the Bandar-log (monkeys) and taken to an abandoned human city. Kaa breaks down the wall of the building in which Mowgli is imprisoned and uses his serpentine hypnosis to draw the monkeys toward his waiting jaws. Bagheera and Baloo are also hypnotized, but Mowgli is immune because he is human, and breaks the spell on his friends.

In The Second Jungle Book Kaa appears in the first half of the story "The King's Ankus". After he and Mowgli spend some time relaxing, bathing and wrestling, Kaa persuades Mowgli to visit a treasure chamber guarded by an old cobra beneath an ancient city. The cobra tries to kill Mowgli but its poison has dried up. Mowgli takes a jeweled item away as a souvenir, not realizing the trouble it will cause in the second half of the story, and Kaa departs.

In "Red Dog" Mowgli asks Kaa for help when his wolf pack is threatened by rampaging dhole (the red dogs of the title). Kaa goes into a trance so that he can search his century-long memory for a stratagem to defeat the dogs:

“

For a long hour Mowgli lay back among the coils, while Kaa, his head motionless on the ground, thought of all that he had seen and known since the day he came from the egg. The light seemed to go out of his eyes and leave them like stale opals, and now and again he made little stiff passes with his head, right and left, as though he were hunting in his sleep. Mowgli dozed quietly, for he knew that there is nothing like sleep before hunting, and he was trained to take it at any hour of the day or night. Then 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?”

”

With Kaa's help Mowgli tricks the dhole into attacking prematurely. Kaa takes no part in the resulting battle, but Mowgli and the wolves finally kill all the dhole, though not without grievous losses. Kaa makes his last appearance in "The Spring Running," as the teenage Mowgli reluctantly prepares to leave the jungle for the last time. "It is hard to cast the skin," he tells Mowgli, but Mowgli knows he must cast the skin of his old life in order to grow a new one.

The Jungle Book (1967)

In the 1967 Disney animation The Jungle Book, Kaa, voiced by Sterling Holloway (and later, by Jim Cummings after Holloway's death), is markedly different from his original counterpart. Rather than being a mentor, he serves as the secondary antagonist who twice attempts to trap Mowgli in his coils in order to devour him throughout the film. He does this through the use of hypnotic eyes as opposed to the original version, in which he uses a serpentine dance to control his prey. His attempts to eat Mowgli always end in a comical failure. He is also quite cowardly, attempting to curry favor with Shere Khan whenever he is around.

Near to the beginning of the film, Bagheera and Mowgli stop to rest on a high branch of a tree. While Bagheera dozes, Kaa slithers down from the foliage towards the boy. Mowgli appears more irritated than scared, telling the snake to go away and leave him alone. Bagheera wrongly believes the mancub to be talking to him and tells him to go to sleep. Kaa is inspired by this and begins to sway in front of Mowgli, rings of colour flashing through his eyes. Mowgli is captivated by the colours as Kaa whispers 'Go to s-s-sleep'. Mowgli's head lolls back and forth, his eyelids drooping under the sleepy influence of the hypnosis. As this is happening, kaa's tail comes from behind the tree and begins to wind around the boy's small frame. Eventually, mowgli begins to yawn and stutter out Bagheera's name but is silenced by Kaa's coils tightening around his neck. Kaa assures Bagheera that Mowgli, who is now smiling obliviously, will be gone by morning. Bagheera immediately wakes from his nap and spins round to see Mowgli hanging limply in Kaa's thick coils, only his bare feet dangling down. Bagheera slaps Kaa, bringing mowgli crashing down onto the branch and out of his trance. Seething, Kaa turns on Bagheera, hypnotizing him before Mowgli shoves his limp coils of the branch and down to the forest floor.

Kaa reappears later on in the film when Mowgli runs away from Baloo, who is trying to return the boy to his own kind. Mowgli comes to rest at the base of a large tree before a long dark tail comes down and pulls him up into the canopy. Up on a branch, Mowgli is trying to release himself from kaa's coils. Kaa attempts to look into Mowgli's eyes but Mowgli is still trying to escape his clutches. Eventually, Mowgli succeeds in untangling himself and begins walking off down the branch but is stopped by Kaa, fastening a coil over his eyes.Mowgli, bewildered, trys to prize the coil off. He succeeds only to be met with Kaa's spinning hypnotic eyes. Mowgli quickly falls under the spell as Kaa begins to sing; "Trust in Me", he makes Mowgli relax and sleepwalk down his body (which take the shape of a flight of stairs) before coming to rest on a hammock of Kaa's coils. Soon, kaa throws Mowgli up into the air, balancing the boy upside down on the tip of his tail. Mowgli's body goes rigid and he begins to snore. Kaa berates the mancub before sliding him into his thick, brown coils. Yet again with only his bare feet and head poking out. This attempt to eat Mowgli is also foiled, ironically by Shere Khan, who is not convinced by Kaa's bluff, even after searching Kaa's coils and not feeling Mowgli inside; the distraction caused by Khan allowed Mowgli to regain consciousness and escape.

Holloway decided to play Kaa with a lisp, a condition which composers Sherman Brothers brought into the character's song in The Jungle Book, "Trust in Me".

The Jungle Book (2003)

In The Jungle Book 2, he appears when he shifts his interests to Shanti, who is lost in the jungle. First scaring her into looking into his eyes, she is quickly enticed and her eyes begin to mirror his . She starts to smile and drops the torch she is holding. Her mouth hangs open as Kaa brushes back her hair and slides around her neck. He asks if she is lost, he makes her nod, then whether she is hungry, because he is starved. The young girl cannot look away and is guided on to a small rock. As Kaa hangs above her, she shuffles her bare feet around and stands on tiptoe in an effort to get closer to the python's eyes. He attempts to eat her whole. But, as he attempts to swallow her, Ranjan, Mowgli's stepbrother, knocks her out of the trance, causing Kaa to swallow a boulder and getting a severe beating from Ranjan.

Other appearances

Kaa also appeared in the short-lived TV series Jungle Cubs, this time seen as a friend of the other animals when they were cubs. Although he still uses hypnosis on occasion, his skills at this age are far less efficient than when used as an adult, with him failing to hypnotize a sleeping Baloo and only hypnotizing a couple of vultures by accident. He was also seen having far a less malevolent personality as a cub than as adult, once going to great lengths to save Baloo after he believes that he has endangered his friend with his hypnotic abilities, but he still has his sneaky ways in which he often attempts to (unsuccessfully) hypnotize the other cubs, partly threatening on one occasion. He was also seen in the prologue to the series on the Disney Video version, where he again happens to be in the tree under which Mowgli is sleeping. Strangely, he does not seem to recognize Mowgli as he slithers to observe his prey. Then, he wakes Mowgli up only to hypnotize him again, and makes him rise towards him. Before Mowgli falls completely in to a trance, Baloo thwarts Kaa away. His voice was done by Jim Cummings, who reprised this role in Jungle Cubs and The Jungle Book 2. Kaa appeared briefly in the feature film "Mickey's House of Villains" where he sang again during the main villain musical number. A snake like character resembling Kaa made a cameo during the final scene of Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Kaa is also a playable character and a mini-boss in Monkey City.^{[citation needed]}

Ubisoft and Disney Interactive Studios released The Jungle Book Groove Party for the PlayStation and PlayStation 2 video game consoles. The game featured Kaa as a character and also featured Kaa singing "A Mood for Food".

A far more menacing incarnation of the character appeared in the 1994 live-action adaptation. He was brought to life using an actual python but the bulk of his appearances were made using a mixture of CGI and animatronics. He seemed to serve King Louie, killing any intruders to the city when the orangutan clapped his hands to summon him. He tackled Mowgli into a moat inside the capital and attempted to drown him but Mowgli wounded him with a bejeweled dagger, the python fleeing in a cloud of its blood. By the time Mowgli returns to the city with Boone and Kitty, Kaa has fully healed from their prior confrontation. Mowgli flees with Kitty when he hears Louie summoning the snake who then scares the injured Boone into the moat, where the heavy load of treasure he was carrying weighs him straight to the bottom in a cloud of his own blood. Desperately trying to struggle free, Boone sees the skeletal remains of Kaa's past victims, just seconds before meeting his death by the snake.