Questing Beast

It was the fate of Sir Pellinore, one of the Knights of the Round Table, to hunt the Questing Beast until his death, or its. It had the head of a snake, the body of a leopard, the hindquarters of a lion, and the feet of a hart.It is the curse of the beast to always be the victim of insane thirst, and from this comes its madness. The sound of its stomach was said to be the sound of a thousand hunting dogs. As often a pathetic creature as a nightmarish one, the Questing Beast is one of the magical beasts in the legends of King Arthur and his Knights.

In his lap there was an enormous snake's head, which he was patting. At the other end of the snake's head, there was a long, lean, yellow body with spots on it. At the end of the body there were some lion's legs which ended in the slots of a hart. "There there," the King was saying. "I did not want to leave you altogether... I was coming back, honestly I was."

...T.H. White, The Once and Future King