News Releases Officers Wrangle 11-foot, 50-pound Python Sunday Night
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| Monday, 17 August 2009 00:00 |
Officers Wrangle 11-foot, 50-pound Python Sunday Night
Usually, she said, people consider a garter snake a big snake. Sunday night’s snake was no garden snake. It turned out to be an 11-foot, 50-pound python. Francisco Delgadillo, 43, reported the snake to a Riverside County Animal Services after-hours operator. He lives off of Highway 74 in an unincorporated pocket of the county between Lake Elsinore and Perris. He had just gotten home and was chatting with a sister in his enclosed front yard. “Snake!” yelled Delgadillo’s sister. The snake slithered across the front yard. “She was scared and I was thinking, oh my God, that’s a huge snake,” Delgadillo said by telephone. “Our whole yard is fenced so I’m not sure how it got into my property. Maybe it came down from one of trees. We have trees all around our yard.” It was such a large snake that Officer Avila called for backup. Animal Control Officer Dylan Gates responded and the two of them were able to wrangle it and heave it into Avila’s animal control truck. The snake is considered a stray. Similar to any critter that makes it into the shelter, the snake will be kept for a holding period that will allow the rightful owner to redeem it. Animal Services will work with an exotic rescue group if no one calls to claim the reptile. Such snakes are often bought as pets when they are very young and are sometimes abandoned once they get so huge, said Kim McWhorter, an Animal Services program manager who has studied snakes for 15 years. She is a volunteer with a Southern California-based reptile group called Animal Venom Research International.
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UPDATEWe believe we have been contacted by the owner of the Burmese python that ended up in a man's yard in the southwest part of Riverside County late Sunday evening. |
