Look, sorry, I was joking: I didn't seriously mean to ask for learned disquisitions about the cuckoo in the nest or the viper in the bosom. For what it's worth, I believe JaneGC is quite right about the cuckoo, and I see from the Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs that the "viper in the bosom" alludes to Aesop's Fables, I, x: a man warms a cold adder in his bosom, and the ungrateful creature, once warmed up, bites him.
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