JOURNAL STAR (Peoria, Illinois) 27 October 07 Backyard guest not usual nor welcome (Phil Luciano)
Susan is terrified of snakes. Merrill is a bit braver.
That's good for the former, who needed help from the latter Sunday night regarding a slithering invader. The situation isn't unusual nowadays, with more and more exotic snakes ending up on the loose - some of them startlingly enormous.
Susan is Susan Crone, who lives in the 900 block of Ridgemont Road, near Sheridan Village. Merrill is her lone roommate, a Labradoodle with a nose for intruders.
About 6 p.m. Sunday, Crone heard Merrill begin to bark wildly while roaming the fenced-in backyard.
"My dog was barking a something-is-freaking-me-out bark," says Crone, who is in her 40s.
She grabbed a flashlight, marched outside and flashed the beam toward Merrill. Crone's eyes popped open when she spotted a snake, nose-to-nose with her dog.
It wasn't too long, just 1 1/2 feet. Still, any snake is too much snake for Crone.
"It was freaky," she says with a nervous chuckle.
Moreover, Crone knew Mother Nature didn't put this snake across her path.
"I knew it wasn't an Illinois snake," she says. "I watch Animal Planet an awful lot."
The snake looked brownish, with blotchy markings. To her, it resembled a boa constrictor she'd seen on television.
Boas kill their pray by squeezing them to death. Their diet typically consists of rodents, possums and slow, scared-stiff Peorians.
Just kidding about that last one. Still, a few moments after spotting the snake, Crone grabbed her dog and dashed inside.
Nervously, she called police, who in turn summoned the Peoria Animal Welfare Shelter. Not taking any chances, Crone also called PAWS and talked to an animal-control officer.
"I'm terrified of snakes!" she yipped. "We have to get it out of here NOW!"
During the brief wait, anxiety wracked her mind and body.
"I had to have a friend come over and hold my hand," she says.
They worried the snake might get away. But the horrified Crone didn't want to go on a snake hunt.
So she sent Merrill back out. Seconds later, a barking Merrill poked its head into a bush and came out with a snake gently dangling from its jaws.
Crone's friend plucked the snake from the dog's mouth and plopped it into a cardboard box. The PAWS officer arrived to haul off the unwelcome guest.
As it turns out, it wasn't a boa but another type of constrictor, a ball python. Supposedly, Cleopatra wore one around her waist. It's doubtful Crone will adopt that fashion statement.
Friday, the ball python remained at the shelter. No one had claimed it.
That's not surprising. Bill Motteler, assistant manager at the shelter, says kids often bring home snakes from pet shops as a surprise.
"Then mom will find out, and she'll throw it out the window," Motteler says.
In this case, the snake might've come from the nearby Super Pets, 801 W. Lake St. Crone says that an employee there told her the store was missing a ball python.
Store manager Brad Stalker tells me he isn't sure if the Crone snake had come from his place. But it's possible, because the $80 snakes often get stolen from Super Pets.
Other Peoria pet stores keep their snakes behind locked glass doors. Customers can't touch them without the aid of a store clerk.
But Super Pets allows free access to their screen-topped snake tanks. Often, a thief simply slices a screen with a razor, reaches in and pockets a snake.
"We could have a better system," Stalker admits.
Indeed. They could outfit snakes with tiny security tags. Or just lock them up.
Anyway, PAWS handles plenty of snake calls, especially in the spring. But those mostly turn out to be indigenous snakes. Exotic snakes, like boas and pythons, only account for a handful of cases a year.
With this ball python, a PAWS employee has expressed an interest in adopting it. In other cases, Motteler typically calls acquaintances who are herpetologists, who gladly take the snakes off his hands.
The intangible is the eventual length of a snake. By Illinois law, snakes under 6 feet can be legally kept at home.
Ball pythons usually grow to about 4 feet long. Boas reach anywhere between 3 to 13 feet. Another currently popular snake, the Burmese python - known as one of the six biggest in the world - often matures to more than 7 feet. Many reach 25 feet and 400 pounds.
That ought to spook Susan Crone even further. But right now, she's still dealing with aftershocks of her run-in with the ball python. Her friends urge her to stay on guard.
"They say, 'You know, they travel in pairs,'" she says with a laugh. "I say, 'They do NOT!'"
Just keep telling yourself that. And carry a big stick.
Backyard guest not usual nor welcome