JOURNAL-TIMES (Racine, Wisconsin) 15 February 05 Snake slips away at school (Janine Anderson)
Burlington: When Tim Gesteland, a science teacher at Karcher Middle School, came to work the morning of Feb. 10, he noticed something missing: His classroom's 3-foot python.
The live specimen had nosed a wire mesh barrier out of the way and slithered out of its aquarium sometime the night before.
The snake's newfound freedom was elusive. Custodians found the snake about 24 hours after it escaped, when it emerged from its hiding place: a space completely hidden from view, between floor cabinets and the floor.
Karcher Principal Mark Sheldon said there was "no panic, no concern. No one was threatened at all," by the docile 11-year-old snake. Sheldon said the snake is "very laid-back and low-key."
Pythons are nonvenomous, but in the wild crush their prey to death.
The snake is usually content in the aquarium, waiting for its monthly feeding, Sheldon said.
But students at the school described the snake in an entirely different way to Burlington police who showed up to look for the snake. Students had exponentially increased the snake's size and tried to frighten police with tales of a gigantic, 16-foot-long python lurking the school, said Michelle Cannon, a community service officer who helped with the snake hunt.
The Police Department gets several animal control calls a week, she said, but this was her first snake.
"I was excited," she said.
They knew this snake would not look for a high place to hang out, so they concentrated on warm, dark places closer to the ground.
Sheldon said they disassembled the room as much as possible without actually unscrewing anything.
They discovered a gap between the floor cabinets and the wall that opened to the space between the cabinets and the floor. They guessed the snake was there, since it wasn't anyplace else, Cannon said.
Sheldon told the night custodial crew to keep an eye out for the snake, and eventually it emerged from hiding and someone was able to grab it and put it back in the aquarium.
"We had to think like a snake," Cannon said. "We tried to figure out where a snake would go."
http://www.journaltimes.com/articles/2005/02/15/local/iq_3381421.txt
JOURNAL SENTINEL (Milwaukee, Wisconsin) 15 February 05 Tight squeeze: Burlington school quietly searches for missing python (Megan Twohey)
Burlington: There had been no announcement, but by the end of the day, students at Karcher Middle School had figured it out: The python was missing.
"They were joking about having a snake day instead of a snow day," Michelle Cannon, the police officer who was called to the school last week to help find the 3-foot-long snake, said Monday.
The python, with its brownish-green scales, had been living in a science room at the Burlington school for six months.
During that time, the snake had spent all of its nights in the comfort of an aquarium.
On top of the aquarium was a screen that was weighted down by a wood top.
The only hole in the screen was for a thin electrical cord.
Over time, however, the hole had expanded.
Last Wednesday night, the snake slithered out, disappearing into the darkness.
When the science teacher arrived Thursday morning, the aquarium was empty.
"It had worked his way out of the cage," said Mark Sheldon, the school's principal.
Pythons aren't poisonous; they kill their prey through strangulation, not venom. Even so, the school felt compelled to deal with the missing snake in a delicate manner.
The science teacher told Cannon that neither he nor the administration announced that it was missing.
In fact, they specifically asked that the police not arrive at the scene of the disappearance until after school let out, so no one would panic, Cannon said.
But teachers and students were quick to make sense of the empty aquarium. Some did not react calmly.
"He didn't tell the students," said Cannon about the conversation she had with the science teacher upon her arrival at the school. "But they had found out on their own. The snake wasn't in its cage. That spread like wildfire.
"People were freaking out," she said. "There was a teacher who said she wasn't going to come back to work until it had been found."
Sheldon wouldn't say whether the school had announced the snake's disappearance to students or staff.
"I'm not comfortable with this line of questioning," he said.
But earlier, Sheldon said he notified the Burlington School District office of the missing python.
The office had urged him to ask a veterinarian how to best locate a missing snake. The veterinarian suggested luring the snake out of hiding with food.
That's what the science teacher, Cannon and several janitors decided to do when a thorough search of the science room after school was fruitless.
They placed a mouse in a small glass box with a screen on top, then placed the box near a cabinet.
A hole in the cabinet had led them to suspect that the python had burrowed under it, said Cannon. She left the school around 4 p.m.
The science teacher returned to the school after 10 p.m. to monitor the scene along with the custodians, Sheldon said.
He couldn't say when, but at some point at night, the python emerged and was caught.
Sheldon insisted that the disappearance had been a minor affair. In general, he said, the python is very well-behaved.
"He's a very laid-back snake," Sheldon said.
http://www.jsonline.com/news/racine/feb05/301786.asp
