KENNEBEC JOURNAL (Augusta, Maine) 13 August 10 Python, guest of police, awaits owner (Leslie Bridgers)
Fairfield: A 4-foot female python slithered into the backyard of a Park Street home Thursday night. Police said on Friday they still didn't know where it came from.
Kim Moulton called Fairfield police around 8:30 p.m. Thursday to report that she had found a snake in her backyard, had caught it and wanted it to be picked up by police.
Animal Control Officer Dave Huff went to Moulton's house to collect the snake and identified it as a python, according to Deputy Chief Steven Trahan.
Because pythons aren't indigenous to Maine, Trahan said, he's assuming the snake is a pet that was either lost or abandoned.
"It was probably trying to find some place warm to be," said Trahan, noting that the weather Thursday night was cooler than it had been recently.
Trahan said the snake is in safekeeping, and police are waiting to see whether anyone comes to claim it.
"It's a shame that this pet's owner would be so irresponsible in caring for it," Moulton wrote in a letter to the editor submitted on the Morning Sentinel's website. She couldn't be reached Friday for further comment.
A search of the Police Department's call log showed this is the third snake-related incident reported in Fairfield in the past decade, Trahan said.
In 2006, a tractor-trailer driver, who had traveled to Maine from the South and stopped at Pilot Travel Center on Center Road, reported that he found a diamondback rattlesnake in his truck and killed it. In 2003, police received a report of a boa constrictor carcass found on Bear Mountain Road.
Moulton, in her letter, said the snake was a ball python -- a nonvenomous and particularly tame species, according to Robert DuBois, president of the Maine Herpetological Society, a reptile interest group that meets monthly in Waterville.
DuBois said, in general, it's not a good idea to pick up snakes before they're identified, but that if it's identified as a ball python, it's safe to handle. The ball python is so named because it curls up into a ball when it's scared, he said.
"It has a mouth. It can bite, but it's probably one of the most laid-back snakes there is," said DuBois.
Python, guest of police, awaits owner