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Cops Corral Five Foot Python Near Bronx Gas Station
By
John Del Signore
Published Jul 20, 2010
Modified Jul 20, 2010
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By
John Del Signore
Published Jul 20, 2010
Modified Jul 20, 2010
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Around 1 a.m. today a gas station attendant discovered a 5-foot-long python (not pictured) slithering through garbage on a sidewalk at East 161st Street in the Melrose section of the Bronx. "The snake was hissing at us!" Ricardo Andino tells the Daily News. "I've never seen one like it before." Police raced to the scene, but the python resisted arrest for almost a half hour.
Andino gave three cops a box to trap the snake, but he says, "Even the officers were jumping when they were trying to get a hold of it. It took like three of them about 20 minutes to finally get it." Once they got the snake in the box, police delivered it to Animal Care and Control, where a spokesman says, "We're caring for the snake, and it appears to be in good health." It's a male python who will eventually be turned over to a licensed rehabilitator. (The spokesman believes it was somebody's pet.)
"It was kinda weird, you know?" Andino tells the News. "I mean, this is the Bronx. You just don't see a snake, something that big, out of nowhere every day." Well, not every day, but often enough. Three years ago the owner of Pit Stop in Brooklyn found a huge python in her home's sewage pipes; in February 2009 two seven year old boys were coloring on the couch when a four foot boa constrictor emerged from behind one of the couch cushions, and last June a mother of three in Brooklyn found a five-foot long, tan-colored snake under a living room table one morning. Oh, and there's a little garter snake crawling up your pant leg right now.
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bronx
python
snake
John Del Signore
Originally from the Albany area, John Del Signore has called NYC home since 1995. In addition to his thousands of meticulously-crafted bespoke blog posts for Gothamist, his writing has also been published in The Awl, Deadspin, The Nervous Breakdown, and performed at The Brick Theater in Brooklyn.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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