RAPID CITY JOURNAL (S Dakota) 20 July 08 'She's a snake, but she's a lover' - Edgemont sheds reservations about pet python (Mary Garrigan)
Choosing between his hometown and his pet python would be an easy choice for Iraq war veteran Kevin Eberle.
"I would have left Edgemont if they would have told me I couldn't keep her," Eberle said this week about Jager, a female Burmese python who measures 10 feet long, weighs 90 pounds and is quite capable of constricting a grown man to death.
Born and raised in Edgemont, Eberle, 39, returned to the small town in the southwesternmost corner of the state in June. He came back after 10 years in the U.S. Army, two tours in Iraq and a medical discharge for combat injuries that included several broken vertebrae, ruptured disks and nerve damage. "I busted up my back in an IED explosion," he said.
Seven explosions, in fact.
Eberle experienced numerous bombings in Iraq and lived through them all. Jager's original owner, Pvt. 1st Class Jessie Misner, was not so lucky.
In April of 2006, Eberle was just was back from his second tour of duty when his friend asked him if he would keep his pet python for him when he deployed to Iraq. Misner never came home.
"He was killed over there on June 7, 2006," Eberle said.
When his own military career ended, Eberle returned to a job at Custer's STAR Academy, a state-run juvenile corrections facility -- and a house in Edgemont.
Edgemont is small enough that if you move into it with a 10-foot python, your neighbors are going to notice.
"That's Edgemont," he said. "Everybody knows your business. It's a good thing, and a bad thing."
The town welcomed him back, but his pet snake got a cooler reception from some residents and the Edgemont City Council.
"Some citizens were concerned that this was a dangerous animal to be in town," Mayor Jim Turner said.
Eberle appeared before the council July 8 to argue that the town's ordinance outlawing wild or vicious animals within the city limits shouldn't apply to Jager.
"She's a snake, but she's a lover," Eberle said.
After he explained that the snake was always caged in a secured enclosure and never removed or handled without at least two adults present, the city council apparently agreed with him, Turner said.
"My feeling was that the authorities needed to know where the snake was -- for peoples' protection, yes, but more so for the snake's protection," he said. "If it got out, police might see it and shoot first, ask questions later."
That's not likely to happen, Eberle said.
He admits that Jager did escape her cage once when he lived in Colorado Springs, Colo., but she spent an uneventful week hibernating in a cold garage and never left the home's premises.
He said the 5-year-old snake, which may grow to between 16 and 22 feet long at maturity, was never in violation of any city ordinance. "When I went to the city council, they didn't think so, either," Eberle said.
She's a snake, but she's a lover