Sedro-Woolley men skin 16-foot road kill python

SEDRO-WOOLLEY, Wash. —

If spotting road kill were a lottery, Lino Silva would have hit the jackpot.



While heading down River Road near Riverfront Park Thursday morning with his friend, Sarah Vogt, Silva thought he saw a large tree root.



It was a 16-foot-long python lying dead on the side of the road, apparently run over by a car just below its neck.



"I just turned my head, and I saw something huge like a snake," said Silva, 45. "I have a fear of these things. We looked at it and we were like, `Holy guacamole!'"



Two hours later, Silva and Vogt's boyfriend, Nick Pfeifer, 29, of Sedro-Woolley had hauled the snake to a relative's house on Evans Road. Within about 30 minutes, they had skinned the python and discarded the meat.



Standing over the brown, tan and white scales lying across the lawn at noon Thursday, Silva waved his arms excitedly recounting the discovery.



"I've never seen such an animal or snake this big, picked it up and held it," Silva said.



Silva waved his arms and made an explosion sound - as if his head were exploding - as he described how he felt when he first realized that what he had found was a python.



Pfeifer was calmer, explaining that he would call a taxidermist to preserve the skin for leather.



"I'm hoping to get enough to make a leather jacket out of it," Pfeifer said. "If I don't have enough for a whole jacket, I'll probably do a vest."



Pfeifer said he loves snakes as he showed off the winding dragon tattoo on his right forearm. He already owns a 5-foot-long python named EBK for Easter Bunny Killer, because he adopted it on Easter Sunday.



"My dad had snakes when I was younger," Pfeifer said. "He let them crawl around me when I was 3 or 4 years old."



Silva was happy to pass the python on to his friend.



"I don't have a desire to keep it," Silva said. "I didn't even want to touch it."



Neighbors - drawn by the sight of the snakeskin or the rotten, fishy odor it gave off - gathered in the lot. Dozens of flies crawled across the skin's surface.



The pair said they had never skinned an animal before, so they mimicked what they had seen on television. Pfeifer said he remembered watching a snake get skinned on an episode of "Dual Survival" on the Discovery Channel.



"It peeled off like a banana," Silva said.



They speculated the python was someone's pet. At 16 feet, they guessed the original owner couldn't keep it indoors or feed it.



"What are you going to feed this thing?" Pfeifer said. "A goat every two weeks? Children?"

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