City police were called Friday morning to remove a python that dropped through the ceiling of an elderly woman’s apartment.
It wasn’t the first time police have been called to 33 Summer St. in recent weeks to remove large constrictor snakes.
“The lady was in her bathroom when it fell through the ceiling into her bathtub,” Cpl. Chuck Hall said.
“It” was a 2-foot-long python belonging to former upstairs tenant Susan Webster, who moved out of the city, Hall said.
He didn’t handle the snake – opting instead to use a broom to coax the animal into a plastic tote.
“I wasn’t going to grab it,” he said. “It was coiling around the handle while I was trying to get it in the tote.”
As troublesome as the relatively small python was to handle, Hall said the encounter paled in comparison to the more than 4-foot-long constrictor that dropped through the woman’s kitchen ceiling three weeks ago.
In addition to being more than twice the other snake’s length and much thicker in diameter, the python that landed on the woman’s refrigerator was also angry, Hall said.
“No one got near it,” Hall said, adding that eventually Webster was called to take her pet away.
Webster faces no charges or fines for what she told police was an escape staged by the two reptiles before she moved out.
The snakes escaped from an aquarium by pushing off the lid.
Somehow the creatures made their way into the floor and the suspended ceiling above the first-floor apartment.
Hall said Webster told no one about the missing snakes before she left.
“Unbeknownst to the woman downstairs, she misplaced a couple of constrictors,” Hall said.
While the drop-ins were unexpected, Hall said he was confident they wouldn’t happen again because Webster said her snakes were all accounted for and because the first floor tenant moved out of her home Friday – for reasons unrelated to the snakes.
www.timesargus.com/article/RH/20100904/NEWS01/709049897/0/NEWS02
