I'm calling "bull" on this one.
Officers catches, relocates big snake
BOARDMAN — This is the story of the big one that didn’t get away.
But it wasn’t a fish. Rather, Boardman Animal Control Officer John Russell caught and relocated a huge snake Tuesday morning.
Employees of the Riverview Motel at 200 Front St. N.E. called police at 11:46 a.m. to report a 10-foot snake in the parking lot. Russell responded and found the callers weren’t exaggerating.
“It was a bull snake,” he said. “This was the biggest one I’ve seen, at least this close to the city.”
He estimated the snake was 9-10 feet long and 2-2 1/2 inches wide. The reptile was too heavy for the flimsy snake-catching rod, Russell said, so instead he roped the snake using the dog-catching pole.
The snake wasn’t harming anything, he said, and so he took it to a weedy area on city property and released it.
Russell said the department gets about five calls a year about snakes, but usually they are about 1-2 feet long. While this was the largest snake he had seen in Boardman, Russell said he’s come across bigger in Eastern Oregon’s mountains.
