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PALATKA DAILY NEWS (Florida) 27 November 04 Home-buyer finds unexpected amenity: Four-foot python is unwelcome resident in woman's kitchen (Robert Morris)
Palatka: First-time home-buyers should always expect some surprises.
Marvel Hagen knew that her new house on the St. Johns River would be a "fixer-upper" when she bought it. She moved in two weeks ago and each night after getting off of work, she would do a little touch-up here or there. Last Tuesday night, after spreading some spackling on the bedroom wall, she walked into the kitchen.
A three-and-a-half-foot-long ball python was curled up on the kitchen floor.
"I just froze for a while," Hagen said. "I didn't expect to see that big snake in my new house."
The snake slithered underneath the refrigerator while Hagen called the Putnam County Sheriff's Office. Lt. Theresa Odom and Deputy Cecil Manning were sent to Hagen's aid.
"We went in thinking it was a rat snake or a garden snake or something," Odom said, and the first glimpse did not change their false impression. When the officers looked underneath the refrigerator, "all we saw was a little piece of it."
The two tried moving the refrigerator to the center of the room, but the snake stayed curled up underneath it. Odom said they decided if the snake wasn't going to move, they would move the snake by putting the refrigerator outside the house until the snake crawled away.
"Then the snake fell out of the bottom of it," Odom said, candidly admitting that she is not a snake person. "It got a little exciting right there."
With a curtain rod, the deputies scooped the python into a plastic trash can and dumped it from there into a garbage bag, then transported their captive quarry to jail. Odom said detaining the animal until they could find a new home for it seemed like the only fair option.
"If we let it go in the woods, a year from now it would be eating small children," Odom said, calling the snake the strangest animal she'd responded to other than a possum in a dresser drawer a few years ago. "There's no reason to be killing something that hasn't bothered anybody else."
With the snake apprehended, new homeowner Hagen called her real estate agent about her unwanted roommate. She was told that the home inspector had found a large cage inside the house from a previous inhabitant, but the cage was empty and no one thought much of it.
At the jail, the officers asked around if anyone wanted a snake and shortly afterward the trespasser was released into the custody of Deputy Anthony Gately and his 13-year-old son, Asa.
"My son's always wanted one," Gately said. "He's got one now."
Gately said the officers bringing in the python may have been over-impressed by the size of the snake. "They told us over the radio he was 6 feet long," Gately said.
The ball python, named for its ball-like defensive posture, will eventually grow to almost 5 feet in its 25-year life-span, said a local wholesale supplier of snakes and snake food to pet stores.
"The ball python is actually one of the first snakes I would recommend to a parent," said Greg Hanks, owner of G & G Rodents and Reptiles in Palatka. "It's one of the least aggressive pythons and very rare to strike."
Its diet should be a rat or mouse approximately once a week, to replicate its feeding cycle in its native Africa. Hanks said meal time for the snake is not a pleasant thing to see.
"I don't think I'd call it fun to watch," Hanks said. "For us, it's not a big excitement. We're not buying the snake to watch it feed."
Gately and his son have not yet fed the snake and are still trying to name it.
"We haven't found out if it's male or female yet," Gately said. "If it's male, we'll probably call him Cecil."
The python's namesake and arresting officer, Deputy Cecil Manning, could not be reached for comment.
Home-buyer finds unexpected amenity

"If we let it go in the woods, a year from now it would be eating small children,"

So ignorant its funny......then she adopts it knowing it will eat her children in a year....lol...
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Alberto

I believe a different person adopted it not the one that made that comment. But I agree, I died laughing when I read that but at least they didn't kill it!
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Nita Hamilton
5.9 Normal BP's
1.0 Het Orange Ghost
1.4 Humans (DH, Me and 3 daughters)

Yeah i know i made a mistake i skimmed it a lil to quick...couldnt stop laughing though.....those man eating ball pythons.....watch-out!!!!!!!!!!.......lol.....
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Alberto

poor thing...he woke up from a nap to find his family had moved !! lol

I am glad to see they didnt kill it ...or let it loose to eat children... O_o
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Charles Glaspie

At least these ignorant people didn't assume he got his name from what he eats...only portions of a man.