DETROIT FREE PRESS (Michigan) 10 November 13 A few minutesss with ... A man who found sssomething ssstrange (Jim Schaefer)
Photo @ URL below: Chuck Kaye, 29, of Southfield found this albino Burmese python in his backyard. He has no idea how it got there. He wasn't scared, but 'I don't do snakes.' Kaye donated it to a pet store. (Sue Schaefer)
When the lawn-mower man started banging on his door and saying a pet was loose outside, Chuck Kaye of Southfield ran out expecting to find one of his dogs making a break for it.
Instead, Kaye found a surprise.
It was an albino Burmese python, between 5 and six 6 feet long. It certainly couldn’t eat a human — SHUDDER — but it is big enough to scare the daylights out of you if you stumbled upon it outside.
I thought Kaye, 29, might feel the same way, but when we talked on the phone last week, he seemed about as matter-of-fact as a mechanic discussing a tire change.
QUESTION: I heard that you found quite a surprise in your backyard the other day.
ANSWER: Yes, sir.
What did you think when you saw it?
Well, I actually had a lawn-mowing crew over to mow my backyard, and they found it, going underneath the back gate. And I just picked it up.
You gotta walk me through how you found it. Where were you when the grass-cutting crew saw the thing?
Yeah, I was in the house. I was in the house, and then he came banging on my door, told me my pet was getting out of the backyard. I have a dog, so I thought my dog was getting out of the backyard, but it was actually a 5-foot, albino python.
So you go running out in the backyard, trying to find your dog, and what did you see?
I saw an albino python halfway underneath the gate. ... I just grabbed it up by the tail and drug it back to the house and put it in a Tupperware container. And I put an ad up on Craigslist for a “found” snake. And nobody responded. So I, after about a week, I fed it two small mice.
You fed it two small mice. So, you kept it for about a week in the Tupperware container?
Well, it was a big Tupperware container.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Let me back up for a second. What was that moment like for you when you run out there expecting to see your dog and instead you see this 5-foot-long snake?
Well, my reaction was just, “Yeah, it’s a snake. It’s someone’s pet.” So I’m figuring if I put an ad up on Craigslist as a “found” snake that it would be found.
All right. Didn’t work. Do you like snakes?
No.
But yet you grabbed the thing by the tail.
Yeah, because it was someone else’s pet.
What were the lawn-mower guys doing?
Just watching. Then they went back to cuttin’ my lawn ’cause that’s what I paid them to do.
I heard they were all standing around letting out horrified shrieks.
No. No. That’s not the case.
All right. Why don’t you like snakes? Are you afraid of them at all?
Yeah. But I know about snakes.
So you thought right away it was somebody’s pet and probably not dangerous?
Yes. And it wasn’t dangerous.
What do you do for a living, if you don’t mind me asking?
Why is that?
I was just gonna say you look like a pretty young, fit guy who could handle a big snake if it tried to attack him.
(Chuckles.) Oh, the snake didn’t try to attack me.
OK. OK. ... What’s your best guess? How do you think it ended up in your backyard?
I have absolutely no clue. I mean, honestly, when I gave the snake to the pet store, they said it looked pretty beat up, like it had been outside for a while, and one girl there was really happy, and she was more than willing to take it in.
So you donated it to the pet store?
Oh, yeah.
You should have asked for some money, man!
No. ... I just wanted to get rid of it. I didn’t want to have anything to do with it. I don’t do snakes.
Why do you say that? Talk about that a little bit.
No, I just — I don’t do reptiles. I have two dogs, and I don’t need a 5-foot snake in my house.
Did you have an image in your head that you’d come out into the living room someday and the snake will have swallowed your dog whole?
No. It was not that type of snake. Snake’s not that big around. A 5-foot snake is not anything that’s going to swallow a pit bull. ... All I was trying to do was give it back to the owners. I couldn’t locate the owners, and I gave it to a pet store.
Well, that’s a good deed that you did, man. I think some people would have either let it go or maybe even taken a hatchet to it.
Well, I don’t know how most people think, but that’s not the way I think.
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