BUCKS COUNTY COURIER TIMES (Levittown, Pennsylvania) 16 August 05 Sss-searching for Sid the snake (Patrick Lester and Pamela Batzel)
Missing: A 13-foot, 100-pound Burmese python that goes by the name Sid.
Last seen: Sawmill Road in Plumstead Township.
Owner's reaction: "Freaked out."
Police have issued an all-points bulletin for Sid, who somehow managed to slither away from her home and owner Friday night or Saturday morning.
Her disappearance has left Thomas Esbensen distraught and hoping for her safe return.
"It's almost like losing a girlfriend," Esbensen said Monday after spending part of his day searching for his prized pet. "I just don't want to see her run over."
Sid had not been found as of Monday evening.
Esbensen discovered that Sid was missing Saturday morning when he returned home from working the night shift at K-Mart. He's looked high and low, mostly high, with no luck. "She's a tree climber," he said.
How do you lose a python?
Well, Esbensen figures that while he was at work, Sid managed to push her way through the glass doors to her 8-by-10-foot cage, made her way to an open back door and found a way out.
Esbensen, who nurtured Sid from an 18-inch-long baby to the mature python she is today, suspects the sight of a 13-foot python in the middle of Bucks County might "freak out" someone. Although Esbensen acknowledges Sid "could be a threat," he said, "once she knows you're not food, she's cool."
In a flier he's distributing asking for help in the Sid search, Esbensen writes: "She is a tree climber so look up more than on the ground. It's slow on land and will not seek you out.
In addition, he writes: "It's friendly, but you have to not provoke it."
Esbensen's mother, Dot, says Sid is harmless.
"She would not hurt you," she said, referring to herself as Sid's "granny." Sid knows granny as the woman who often feeds her two "jumbos" at a time. A jumbo is a very large rat, Dot Esbensen said.
Esbensen called Plumstead police Saturday to report the missing snake, which left the house between 10 p.m. Friday and 6 a.m. Saturday.
Police Chief Duane Hasenauer asked that anyone who sees the snake to call police and not to harm it. "We're trying to get the guy his snake back," he said.
Zach Boles, manager of Osbaldeston's Pets of the World in Plumstead, said the Burmese python is "not an aggressive snake. They're pretty docile." His store does not sell the Burmese but does sell other snakes, including the ball python, which typically do not grow longer than 5 feet.
Pythons constrict their food to kill it. A snake the size of Sid could go a long time - possibly up to six months - without a meal, Boles said, although he added it would not be "real healthy for it."
A typical owner would feed a Burmese every one to three weeks, giving it two to five pounds of food, Boles said. Snake owners often feed their pets pre-killed animals. It "keeps [the snakes] a little bit calmer," Boles said.
http://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/news/111-08162005-528388.html
NBC 10 (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) 16 August 05 13-Foot Burmese Python Loose In Bucks County - Owner Says Lost Snake A Tree Climber, 'Look Up'
Doylestown, Pa. : A man is distributing fliers and police have joined the search for a 13-foot, 100-pound Burmese python lost in central Bucks County.
The snake named Sid apparently managed to push her way through the glass doors of her 8-by-10-foot foot cage and out the door while owner Thomas Esbensen worked the night shift at K-Mart, and was gone when he returned to his Plumstead Township home Saturday morning.
"I just don't want to see her run over," said Esbensen, who nurtured Sid from an 18-inch-long baby.
"She is a tree climber so look up more than on the ground," Esbensen's leaflet advises, adding that the snake is friendly, "but you have to not provoke it."
Plumstead Township Police Chief Duane Hasenauer urged anyone who sees the snake to call police and not hurt it. "We're trying to get the guy his snake back," Hasenauer said.
http://www.nbc10.com/news/4856404/detail.html
