J: THanks for the lead on this ... took a big of digging though to find it. respects, Wes



CARROLL COUNTY TIMES (Westminster, Maryland) 18 October 05 Farmer finds big surprise in cornfield (Carrie Ann Knauer)

It was still mostly dark when Brad Rill was driving a combine through a cornfield off Black Rock Road near Hampstead Saturday morning when he hit something that wasn't corn.

It wasn't a rock, and it wasn't a log, Rill said, but it sure stopped the combine.

Rill said he got out of the cab and found something he never would have expected - a 14-foot python.

"It looked like something out of a science fiction story," Rill said.

Rill said he gathered the other workers over and called his father-in-law Donald Lippy to come out and get pictures of the snake. The men used their paces to measure the snake and estimated it to be 14-feet long, Rill said. The snake was still alive at first, he said, but the injury it sustained soon killed it.

Later in the day, someone who lived in the area passed by the field and said his neighbor had lost his python earlier in the summer, Rill said. It was good to hear an explanation for why there was a python loose in Central Maryland, Rill said, though he was sorry someone's pet had been killed.

Nicky Ratliff, executive director of the Humane Society of Carroll County, said she had not heard any reports for a missing python this summer, but she said it is not unusual for pet snakes to get loose.

Snakes are incredibly strong, she said, and are able to lift the lids of their cages if not properly fastened. Sometimes people take their snakes outdoors to get some sun and leave them unattended to answer a phone or complete a small task, Ratliff said. When they come back, the snake is gone.

It's important not to leave pets unattended when they are released from their cages, she said.

Every now and then the humane society will get a call from someone reporting they have seen a nonindigenous snake, lizard or even alligator loose in Carroll County, Ratliff said. Many times people raise these exotic animals and then get tired of them, or they outgrow their cages and the owner decides to release them into the wild.

This can be harmful for the natural environment, Ratliff said, because sometimes these animals can reproduce in the wild if they find a mate or they can out-compete the wildlife native to an area. Florida is an example of a state where non-native animals, snakes in particular, are out of control and changing the state's ecosystem.

If Rill and his combine had not killed the snake, it's unlikely that it would have survived the Maryland winter outdoors, Ratliff said. Most snakes, particularly exotics, live in warm weather climates and could not survive the cold.

Rill said he and the rest of folks at Lippy Brothers Inc. have been showing the pictures of the snake as proof of the story, otherwise people probably wouldn't believe it. Rill said he could still hardly believe it himself.

"It makes you look out at the fields you walk through," he said with a laugh.
Farmer finds big surprise in cornfield

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