BEACH REPORTER (Manhattan Beach, California) 03 November 05 Burmese python escapes, giving owner a scare (Whitney Youngs)

After escaping her enclosure due to an accident, Lady, a Burmese python that went missing for about 48 hours last week, has since been found by her owner who discovered her in between a wall of his Hermosa Beach house.

Lady, a roughly 10-year-old python that stretches more than 14 feet and weighs between 120 and 130 pounds, slithered out of her enclosure after climbing on a branch that broke, causing a hole in her casing door.

“She is very docile, she had been fed on frozen food so her strike response to food is almost nothing,” said Lady’s owner, Dave Wessel. “The branch that she uses to get up and down broke and then cracked the front Plexiglas, and then she proceeded to make her way out. A jail break, if you will.”

Wessel, a longtime Hermosa Beach resident who lives in the house he grew up in, discovered her missing Oct. 25, and called the Hermosa Beach Police Department and local animal control agencies. He then began to walk the immediate area surrounding his house on 30th Street, and notified his neighbors within a two-block radius with fliers and a picture of the lost python.

“I know a few of the neighbors weren’t too pleased, it was kind of like a mixed community. They were all very glad I called the Police Department and animal control, and walked the neighborhood,” said Wessel.

According to Hermosa Beach Press Information Officer Sgt. Paul Wolcott, the incident was a case regularly handled by animal control departments.

“From what I understand, the snake never left the house,” said Wolcott. “We really didn’t have a lot of involvement.”

Some may wonder if housing a python is legal but according to the Hermosa Beach municipal code, owners of “nonhousehold pets” may keep them but must obtain permits in order to do so.

“It is unlawful for any person owning, possessing or having the custody or control of any animal other than household pets to keep, harbor, possess or maintain any such animal within the city without first obtaining a written permit,” states the code. “A violation of this section shall be an infraction.”

The owner must inform the city through the permit process about the kind of animal, where it is kept and how it is kept, providing animal control details “…as to enclosures, tethers, cages or other means which the applicant proposes to employ in the event the permit is granted…”

Lady has been with Wessel for about four months and is the companion of Wessel’s male Burmese python, Waldo, that he’s had for about two years. Waldo is more than 12 feet long. Both snakes live in large enclosures 24 hours a day and are separated during their feeding sessions of thawed rabbits. Lady is kept in an enclosure in the garage that is attached to the house and adjacent to a workshop.

Wessel found Lady Thursday night crawling in a portion of the garage that had a hole in it and realized she was inside one of the walls.

“In the pitch dark I see this silhouette draped across the floor and I turned the light on and there she was,” said Wessel. “I knelt down and she was coming from the wall between the kitchen and the shop. Somehow she came in from the garage into the shop and found her way in between the wall, and that’s where she hung out for a couple of days.”

According to the Oakland Zoo’s Web site, Burmese pythons live mostly in India and lower China, and in some areas in the East Indies. They are semi-aquatic and live near water. They can grow to a length of 20 feet, can weigh as much as 200 pounds and can live up to 25 years. The females are larger than the males. They feed on small mammals, other reptiles and fish, kill by constriction in which the prey suffocates to death, and are considered nocturnal hunters.

Wessel eventually put Lady back into her enclosure and has since fitted the broken Plexiglas with thick bulletproof casing.

“Something that big, someone has got to find it, they can’t hang out forever,” said Wessel.
Burmese python escapes, giving owner a scare

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