Basic Idea: It's an invisible viper than inhabits a statue of itself. Or alternatively, the statue projects an invisible and animate version of itself. Which of the two is the "true" snake is intentionally vague (AKA undecided)
The logic I had when coming up with it was pretty simple. What's something scary? Snakes. What makes them scary? Being hard to detect and being venomous. So I ramped both of those things up, and got an invisible and highly venomous snake.
The snake itself is a pretty normal snake, plus some things
- Extremely venomous
- invisible
- "Breathes" but doesn't drown
If it were visible it would look just like a living version of the snake statue, though colored a bit differently.
Everything I've got right now for writing is just explaining the snake with some detailed containment procedures along with the logic behind them.
The snake itself is invisible but it has a weight and while it can't be seen, the void it leaves in anything it's displacing can be seen. For that reason, the statue is stored in a tank of water. That way you see a snake-shaped bubble in the water when it's out of the statue. When it escapes containment, site staff would spread colored powder around so that way they can see the trail it leaves. Stuff like that. The reason for all this instead of just some infrared cams is because it's completely invisible. No infrared, no ultraviolet.
I think it's overall a fine concept, but it's lacking a real hook. I don't have any ideas around how it came to be, or any antics it got up to aside from an addendum about evacuating/securing pets whenever it escapes after one time when it ate a site manager's pet hamster.