Poor snake!

          "There are all sorts of ways of nobbling favourites," he said, in a sort of death-bed voice. "You ought to read some of these racing novels. In Pipped on the Post, Lord Jasper Mauleverer as near as a toucher outed Bonny Betsy by bribing the head lad to slip a cobra into her stable the night before the Derby."
          "What are the chances of a cobra biting Harold, Jeeves."
          "Slight, I should imagine, sir. And, in such an event, knowing the boy as intimately as I do, my anxiety would be entirely for the snake."

(from The Inimitable Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Part of the fun of writing novels such as Wodehouse's has to be getting to invent some of the colorful names that he uses for the British upper crust.