Alice the albino python had a little too much to eat for dinner.

Just hours before its owner, rocker Alice Cooper, was to take the stage at a Connecticut theater last weekend, the 8-foot-long snake ate a live rat, and then swallowed a 12-by-14 inch heating pad, wires and all.

Before Saturday night’s show, Cooper’s roadies saw the snake’s unusually large bulge and called at-risk snake helper Alison Sloan, who directed Alice to Higganum veterinarian Richard Jacobs.

“It was absolutely an emergency,” Sloan told The Hartford Courant Thursday, noting the wires could have ruptured Alice’s intestines or other organs with fatal results. The pad had been left in the amphibian’s cage by accident.

After sedating the python, Jacobs said he cut a 5-inch incision along a row of scales and maneuvered the heating pad out.

“That’s an outrageous X-ray,” Jacobs said Thursday, looking at the pre-op picture that showed the wires and contacts from the heating pad plus a rodent. “It’s probably the most astonishing X-ray I’ve taken in my career.”

The ailing python is reportedly resting comfortably.

McCready busted for wantin’ OxyContin

Country singer Mindy McCready was busted by police at her Nashville home Thursday and charged with prescription drug fraud for allegedly using a fake script to obtain OxyContin.

McCready, who is out on $10,000 bail, is an enigmatic has-been. She scored big with her ‘96 debut, “Ten Thousand Angels,” but her most recent effort, her ‘02 eponymous record, went nowhere, reportedly leading Capitol Records to drop her from the label.

Cochrane cut from CSI: Miami

The word started on fan Web site CSIfiles.com and spread to the New York Post. Word is that Rory Cochrane is going to be killed off “CSI: Miami.”

RC plays the bookwormish-but-way-cool Tim “Speed” Speedle on the Florida show, which unlike the Vegas version is much more about flash than cogitation. (Compare David Caruso’s cool cat to the obsessive-compulsive, Edgar Allan Poe-quoting William Petersen.)

That’d mean one less geek on television another blow to an under-represented group dear to our hearts. A CBS rep tells the Post that a “Miami” character will die on the show’s season premier, but adds that “viewers will have to wait a while to see if the Internet rumors about the identity are true.”

Ronald Isley suffers stroke

Ronald Isley of Isley Brothers fame suffered a minor stroke but is recovering quickly, according to a statement from his record label, Def Soul Classics. The 63-year-old singer felt ill while walking in London last Friday and checked himself into a hospital, but is back home in St. Louis.

The statement says Isley is “in good spirits” and eager to rejoin the group’s tour. The Isleys are scheduled to play Birmingham, Ala., Saturday night.

Catwoman Kitt flips in car

In an uncanny turn of Jungian synchronicity, Eartha Kitt, who played the original Catwoman on the “Batman” television show, suffered minor injuries Thursday when her car collided with another car and flipped over in Weston, Conn., where she lives.

Kitt, 77, had her two poodles in the car, but they were unhurt.

Chicken pox keep Slater off stage

EDINBURGH, Scotland (AP) – Christian Slater’s British stage debut has been delayed further because of chicken pox.

Organizers earlier this week scrapped the premiere performance of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” which was to open in Edinburgh Friday and run for three weeks in conjunction with the city’s annual arts festival.

Producer Nica Burns said Friday that another three performances had been called off because Slater, 34, had developed a secondary infection that doctors fear might lead to pneumonia without proper rest.

“Christian has been an absolute hero,” Burns said. “He got up from his sick bed yesterday and worked for an hour and a half. However, by the end of the afternoon he had developed a fever and was totally exhausted.”

The play is to run at Edinburgh’s Assembly Rooms before moving to London’s West End next month.

Producers said those holding tickets for the first four performances can exchange them for another night or get a refund. They said the rest of the run would go ahead as planned.

Affleck’s ex dishes on fame

Ben Affleck’s ex-girlfriend Enza Sambataro has spoken out about her ill-fated romance with the actor, declaring the celebrity lifestyle she was thrown into was “not fun,” reports IMDB.com.

A few months after his high-profile engagement to “Gigli” co-star Jennifer Lopez was called off, Affleck stepped out with 26-year-old TV advertising sales executive Sambataro and immediately became the target of the tabloids which brought their romance to an abrupt end less than two months later.

She told People magazine: “I found out what it feels like to in the shoes of a celebrity, and it is not fun. It wasn’t the most pleasant experience. Ben tried to keep it very private. But living that life is not me. I’d rather have my own sanity and private life.”