diff --git a/README.rst b/README.rst
index d16c649ff..22daa1742 100644
--- a/README.rst
+++ b/README.rst
@@ -17,7 +17,7 @@ If you have `setuptools <http://peak.telecommunity.com/DevCenter/setuptools>`_ i
 
 Dependencies
 ============
-The PyMongo distribution has been tested on both Python 2.5 and Python 2.6. Additional dependencies are:
+The PyMongo distribution has been tested on Python 2.x, where x >= 4. Additional dependencies are:
 
 - `ElementTree <http://effbot.org/zone/element-index.htm>`_ (this is included with Python >= 2.5)
 - (to generate documentation) `epydoc <http://epydoc.sourceforge.net/>`_
diff --git a/pymongo/son.py b/pymongo/son.py
index 4faa2f3ae..0be126fe5 100644
--- a/pymongo/son.py
+++ b/pymongo/son.py
@@ -25,7 +25,7 @@ import base64
 
 try:
     import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET
-except:
+except ImportError:
     import elementtree.ElementTree as ET
 
 from code import Code
diff --git a/setup.py b/setup.py
index 0c372393d..755920434 100755
--- a/setup.py
+++ b/setup.py
@@ -10,6 +10,12 @@ from distutils.command.build_ext import build_ext
 from distutils.errors import CCompilerError
 from distutils.core import Extension
 
+requirements = []
+try:
+    import xml.etree.ElementTree
+except ImportError:
+    requirements.append("elementtree")
+
 f = open("README.rst")
 try:
     try:
@@ -47,7 +53,7 @@ setup(
     url="http://github.com/mongodb/mongo-python-driver",
     packages=["pymongo", "gridfs"],
     ext_modules=[Extension('pymongo._cbson', ['pymongo/_cbsonmodule.c'])],
-    install_requires=["elementtree"],
+    install_requires=requirements,
     license="Apache License, Version 2.0",
     test_suite="nose.collector",
     classifiers=[