PRESS DEMOCRAT (Santa Rosa, California) 14 June 03 How do you rescue a python? Gingerly -- Sonoma County handler slips reptile from Marin enclosure (Guy Kovner)
Marinwood: Snake handler Al Wolf cautiously opened a clear plastic panel on the front of the big cage, ready to extricate a Burmese python almost as long as a streetcar, named Devour.
"The whole secret is not to get bit," said Wolf, a Sebastopol man with a soft spot for scaly creatures.
The other danger was getting squeezed by the 20-foot python, a species that kills its prey by suffocation.
Despite her ominous name, Devour merely flicked her forked tongue at Wolf, who runs Sonoma County Reptile Rescue, a private organization.
Locking his bare hands around the 200-pound python's neck, Wolf proceeded to pull her toward the side door of snake owner Steve Babich's house in Marinwood on Friday afternoon.
The black, brown and white snake resisted, like a petulant child, coiling her tail around a tree branch inside the cage. Roy Evans, one of four Reptile Rescue volunteers who helped Wolf with the capture, had to reach in to unwrap the animal's grip.
"She was hanging on big-time," Evans said.
Only then could the five-member serpent team hoist Devour and carry her to the sidewalk, where they stuffed her, tail first, into a box on Wolf's trailer.
"She's a handful," said Danny Mello, a former Point Reyes park ranger and veteran snake handler.
Snakes don't like being pulled from their surroundings, Mello said, explaining why Devour, who's big enough to swallow a dog, resisted the rescue.
She'll be safe at Wolf's sanctuary in Sebastopol, a temporary home for hundreds of snakes, lizards, turtles, spiders, scorpions -- "anything that gives people the creeps," he said.
A former San Francisco Zoo official, Wolf claims a nearly perfect record in finding new homes for abandoned pets and unwanted wild intruders. He'll have to be careful about who gets Devour, who might go to a snake breeder.
Wolf's team was called in by friends of Babich, who is in Sonoma County Jail facing a firearms charge, the District Attorney's Office said.
His mother, Venetta Babich, said she has to move from the Marinwood home she's lived in since 1959. As a boy, Steve Babich roamed the hills across the street and began his unusual animal-collecting career with a caterpillar in a matchbox, she said.
Babich and Devour had their brush with celebrity some years ago, when Channel 2 television cameras captured her biting his leg, said Babich's friend, Frank Paganini.
The python's teeth barely broke his skin, Paganini said, but the segment made Fox's reality TV show, "When Good Pets Go Bad."
Friends marveled at Babich's ability to handle the big snake, which eats dead rabbits. Wolf fed Devour a couple of rabbits Thursday in hopes the meal would mellow her out.
He also fed a rabbit to another of Babich's brood, a 10-foot African rock python in another cage. Meal notwithstanding, the smaller snake was still in a snit Friday.
"Notoriously bad-tempered," Mello said of the species.
Wolf snared it with a long-handled metal clamp and the team quickly stuffed the rock python into a bag.
MARIN INDEPENDENT JOURNAL (San Rafael, California) 14 June 03 Snakes removed from Marinwood home (Jennifer Upshaw)
It took five trained reptile handlers whose combined experience totaled about 100 years, but she went quietly.
Devour, a Burmese python estimated to weigh nearly 200 pounds, was removed without incident yesterday from the Marinwood home of Steven John Babich. A smaller, but more aggressive, African rock python and a docile albino king snake also were removed.
Babich, 42, who is being held in Sonoma County Jail without bail after he was arrested June 5 in Forestville on felony weapons charges, became a poster child for the medical marijuana movement when he was acquitted in March 2001 on charges of cultivation and possession for sale of marijuana.
His mother, 77-year-old Venetta Babich, wants to sell the Marinwood home, and already has things boxed up for the move.
With her son gone and three snakes in the house, the decision was made to let them go.
"He's been collecting snakes since he was 6 or 7 years old, and lizards and turtles - you name it," Babich's mother said. "He got a caterpillar and he kept it for days. He just went from there."
Babich's 2001 case, the county's first acquittal on marijuana charges using a medical need defense, galvanized medical marijuana advocates, who viewed it as a reaffirmation of Proposition 215, the "compassionate use" statute that voters approved in 1996.
Babich argued that he and his mother used the marijuana for pain relief - he to relieve dull pain from, among other things, neck and back injuries sustained in a motorcycle accident when he was 23, and she to treat glaucoma.
Yesterday, officials from the Sebastopol-based Sonoma County Reptile Rescue, educators from Petaluma's Classroom Safari, and former federal park ranger and private snake handler Danny Mello took custody of the snakes from the old pink Eichler home on Idylberry Road Venetta Babich moved into in 1959.
"I feel kind of sad," she said just minutes before the handlers began the operation. "He's had them for a long time. He's doing what's right getting them to a good home."
Longtime family friend and neighbor Paul Mason grew up with Steven Babich. His friend always kept snakes, and Mason never got used to it, he confessed yesterday before the rescue began.
"I'm still not over it," said the 36-year-old insurance claims adjuster of his fear of snakes. "I'm here for moral support and just to say good-bye to the snakes. I'm going to see him (Babich) later today, but I had to see this."
The team assembled, Sonoma County Reptile Rescue's Al Wolf began with a power drill to unlatch the huge cage keeping Devour at bay. The snake has been featured on several television programs, according to family and friends, including the Fox network special "When Good Pets Go Bad."
"OK, towel!" Wolf said sharply as a rolled up bath towel was shoved into the cage to see if the python would bite. With no attack imminent, the team grabbed the snake and pulled, securing Devour's head before dragging the estimated 18- to 20-foot python from the cage. The snake's sex - female - was quickly verified and the mammoth creature was ferried around the side of the house and into a wooden box attached to a trailer.
Rescuers said the snake, which had not been fed for some time before being treated to two, four-pound rabbits the day before her removal, would dine on seven or eight rabbits for her first meal away from home.
She will be brought to good health and trained to react more casually to the sight of food, although her future is uncertain, Wolf said. She could be used as a breeder, be put up for adoption, or be used for educational purposes.
The lions' share of the work complete, the rescuers took a few minutes to relive the weird experience before heading back in for the easiest work of all: scooping up the much smaller king snake.
"I grabbed the head and ... she grabbed a branch," said Mello of Devour's rescue. "That was definitely a handful."
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How do you rescue a python?
