The Toledo Blade is reporting that a group of hunters out to score some duck in northwest Ohio were shocked to happen upon a large snake in the middle of the marsh. While heading over to retrieve a successfully hunted duck, one of the men found what turned out to be a seven foot long African rock python (Python sebae). This is all the more surprising when you consider that 1) It's Ohio 2) It was 37'F and 3) It was sleeting. The hunters could have just run away but they cowboyed up and took the snake with them. Hopefully they also reported the incident to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources. For now, the snake, surely an escaped or released pet, has found a new, indoor home with one of the hunter's neighbors.
Update 12/17/07: Oh good, at least the USGS grabbed the record for their NAS Alert database.
2 comments:
This is a small specimen of a species that can grow to prodigeous lengths. I had a tragic encounter with one in Namibia that was stretched across a road one dark night. I hit it at high speed and nearly wrecked the light truck that I was driving to the hospital with a snake-bitten child. It was 18' long.
Kudos to the hunters for hauling it in. It will definitely be interesting to see if anyone steps forward to claim the snake.
Post a Comment