ST PETERSBURG TIMES (Florida) 07 August 03 Missing 15-foot python found (Steve Thompson)
New Port Richey: A 15-foot long Burmese python was back in the hands of its owner Wednesday, three weeks after disappearing from home.
The reptile's owner, Charles Pierce, said Hugo was angry but unhurt.
One of Pierce's neighbors got a surprise early Wednesday when Hugo slithered onto his back patio.
"The head was sticking out straight, oh god, about four feet," said Harold "Buttons" Morhle, 54, who lives five houses from Pierce on Jacqueline Drive.
"His tongue was flickering left and right. He was wiggly and his tail was hanging off the porch."
Morhle's dog, Sadie, had started barking at the back door about 3 a.m.
"I let her out to see what it was," Morhle said. "Right away she went to the tail of this thing. It looked like something from the zoo."
Hugo was lying along Morhle's patio furniture.
"I closed the door and woke my wife up to keep an eye on it while I went and called 911," Morhle said. He had read in the newspaper that a neighbor's pet snake had been missing.
A sheriff's deputy soon showed up and contacted Pierce, who walked took his snake home.
The snake is very aggressive and could easily eat a cat, a dog or a small child, Pierce said.
"When I got there he was bobbing and weaving like he was looking for dinner," he said. "He was hungry."
Hugo was also hissing, which Pierce said is unusual for his pet.
"Normally he wouldn't make a noise when I'm around," he said.
Pierce said Hugo drank a lot of water since coming home and would probably quickly devour the chicken Pierce planned to feed him Wednesday afternoon.
He thinks his snake was stolen. The damage to his screen porch when he found Hugo missing looked more like a burglary than an escape, he said.
And since then, sheriff's detectives had told him that they had received reports of someone trying to sell a big python to two Florida pet stores, Pierce said.
"I think somebody had him and dumped him," he said. "In the (three) weeks since he's been gone somebody would've seen him if he was just in this neighborhood."
Morhle's back yard is surrounded by a 6-foot-tall fence that Pierce said his snake could easily have navigated.
"My wife was out there weeding all day today," Morhle said.
He was glad she hadn't run into Hugo and that no harm had come to his dog, he said. But he was also happy for Pierce.
"I'm glad he got his pet back."
Missing 15-foot python found