NASHVILLE CITY PAPER (Tennessee) 25 August 03 Fowl-eating boa chomps chickens (Craig Boerner)
A snake that eats frogs and rats as an infant and works its way up to chickens, rabbits and even wild pigs, is believed to be responsible for this summer’s gradual disappearance of the familiar chickens in front of the Metro Police West Patrol sector.
A boa constrictor is believed to be living somewhere in the precinct, according to West Sector Captain Mike Mitchell, after two intact snake skins were found recently that indicate the predator is roughly 8 feet long and “pretty big” in the center.
“We’ve never seen the snake,” Mitchell said. “We’ve looked for it but we’ve never seen it. When we first found this skin out in the bushes by the front door, I picked it up and brought it in. We talked about it and it wasn’t a big deal.”
It wasn’t a big deal, he said, until another, larger, skin was found two or three months later.
“[The skin was] as big or bigger than the other one and my secretary began to become a little concerned,” Mitchell said. “And of course I tried to ease her concerns but we just had the shrubs freshly mulched so you could see where it had slithered along in the mulch.”
West Patrol, 6730 Charlotte Pike, is virtually surrounded by woods so it is not unusual for wildlife to enter the campus, he said.
The chickens and roosters showed up in similar fashion and the officers and staff began feeding them in the mornings. The West Sector, at one time, had 10 or 12 animals living on the grounds – a rooster and two hens and a bunch of baby chicks.
“We did have chickens, we don’t anymore. They disappeared,” Mitchell said. “I don’t know whether the snake got them or chicken hawks got them but they are gone.”
“The chicks disappeared and then the chickens disappeared and then we had, finally, one rooster left and then he disappeared.”
Mitchell speculated that somebody had the snake as a pet and took it to the woods when it got too big.
The boa constrictor, typically found in Central and South America, is a non-poisonous tropical snake belonging to a specialized group of reptiles - the first vertebrate class completely independent of water.
Some boas live in underground holes while others live in trees and eat mainly birds and small mammals.
Fowl-eating boa chomps chickens