NEW YORK POST (New York) 08 September 06 Snake Harmer's Rage - Stabs Boa, Threatens Neighbors: Cops
A Brooklyn man stabbed his 6-foot boa constrictor in the mouth yesterday then ran around his building with the snake wrapped around his arm, threatening to hurl it at anybody who came near him, authorities and witnesses said.
When police arrived at the Gibb Mansion, a Bedford-Stuyvesant facility for low-income and HIV-positive people, they found the emotionally disturbed man racing between his studio apartment and the lobby - with a pair of scissors still embedded in the snake's jaw.
A witness said the middle-age man was ranting about all the guinea pigs he had bought for the snake to eat and that he appeared to want to throw his pet out of the building.
The man was finally persuaded to sit in a wheelchair in the lobby and give up the snake, the witness said.
He was then strapped to a stretcher and taken to Long Island College Hospital for psychiatric observation.
The brown and black snake was recovering yesterday at the city's Animal Care and Control facility, where it was given pain killers, said Richard Gentles, director of administrative services.
"It doesn't look that serious," Gentles said. "He seems to be OK."
It's illegal to keep a boa constrictor as a pet in New York City, said Gentles, so the snake and its owner will not be reunited. Instead, the reptile will recover with a wildlife rehabilitator before heading off to an animal sanctuary - joining the roughly 100 snakes the city seizes or rescues every year.
All too often, snakes are abandoned, thrown out like trash or surrendered to authorities when people realize it's tough to care for them, Gentles said.
"It's just not fair to the animal to be kept under those conditions," Gentles said.
The 71 residents at the Gibb Mansion, a renovated historic home, appeared take their snake-stabbing scare in stride.
"Where's that snake at?" joked a wheelchair-bound resident as he rolled out the door.
A supervisor at the facility owned by the Pratt Area Community Counsel said she couldn't comment on the incident because it would violate patient confidentiality.

http://www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/snake_harmers_rage_regionalnews_philip_messing_and_heidi_singer.htm

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