Question: Disclaimer: This is not a duplicate of [this question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/78778/how-would-a-giant-marine-snake-like-creature-survive). This question deals with a specifically non-marine snake. 

My fantasy story requires a giant snake. The easiest way to create one (as far as food goes, at least) is to have it be marine, but I don't want to tie my setting to the ocean coast. For that reason, I want a giant snake which is land-based (or at least not ocean-going). 

The most immediate problem I see with this is food: snakes seem to operate on two basic strategies: 

1. **Strangulation.** The snake lies in wait, crushing its victims or drowning them.
2. **Venom.** The snake lies in wait, relying on fast reflexes to strike its target with paralyzing/killing venom, making for an easy meal.

The problem I see my snake having is its size. It's going to be too big to hide, and I can't really see it moving fast enough to poison anything. What is its strategy when it comes to food? 

If there are other problems involved with a giant snake, please let me know and feel free to address them as well. 

**How can I get a giant non-marine snake?** 

*Notes:* 

* The snake needs to be six feet wide in diameter. This is a must. There is no requirement on length, but I would imagine this width will make the snake very long.
* The climate is tropical. Large trees are plentiful.
* While I don't want a marine snake, lakes, rivers, or other bodies of water are perfectly fine.

Answer: 
I suspect that the scale you're talking about would run into the square cube issue. Using the Green Anaconda as a model, our girtheist​ living snake, at 29 feet you only get a foot of diameter. Your snake would be approximately 174 feet long... That's big. 

If we handwave that we still have the issue that as far as we know all very large snakes have been semi-aquatic. Being huge it helps to displace your weight in water. 

Handwaving that we still have some issues to address. 

Heat being the first that comes up. A very large reptile will have problems maintaining body temperature. Some reptiles have limited reproductive endothermy, but that's still a stretch for one that's a full six feet thick and one hundred and seventy four feet long. So it'll need to be hot, like really really hot, all the time.

The next issue is food. Now surprisingly this may not be as big a problem as you might think. The Green Anaconda can go weeks without a good meal, so with a slow metabolism your snake may only need a cow every week or so... But how would this monster sneak up on a cow?

This leads me to the point of all this. I suspect that the only way such a creature could exist on Earth would be in captivity. Some snakes really do get significantly larger in captivity... Some even seem to match their enclosures. 

Now if your giant snake was carefully maintained by studious herpetologists, who very carefully cared for it, you may be able to get your monster. Unfortunately it would​n't survive long on it's own.

This arrangement would require some handwavium, but a little less. These snakes exist in the wild, they're just significantly smaller.
If you're only worried about food, then make it an ambush predator that will happily snack on anything silly enough to walk in it's mouth at any time but active mostly at night. Tropical jungles can hide tanks and plane wrecks from views, they can hide a six foot snake head.

The snakes main problem would be the noise it makes moving around but it could use that as part of it's hunting strategy to trap prey by circling in on the prey so that when it hears the snake and runs, it actually runs into another part of the snake ready to grab it and squeeze it to death.