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MACON TELEGRAPH (Georgia) 01 December 05 Woman finds Burmese python in yard
Dublin, Ga. (AP): It wasn't your usual garden snake.
Vanetta Walls of Dublin knew the bag she found in her yard yesterday was NOT litter when it began to wiggle.
She tells The Macon Telegraph that she picked up the bag and it started moving.
The bag contained a Burmese python that was nearly seven feet long.
Walls caught the attention of a man walking down the street, and he threw the bag in a curb drain.
Police Officer John Knight arrived and fished the snake out of the drain.
Stan Bennett -- who is a licensed trapper with the state Department of Natural Resources specializing in snakes -- helped with the rescue. He agreed to keep the snake until police find the owner or determine what to do with it.
Woman finds Burmese python in yard

WDUN (Gainesville, Georgia) 01 December 05 Police seek owner of abandoned 7-foot python
Dublin, Ga. (AP): Trapper Stan Bennett often keeps the poisonous and nonpoisonous snakes he captures in his home, but his wife drew the line when he showed up with a 7-foot Burmese python rescued from a sewer.
"She said she didn't want to see anybody squeezed to death," said Bennett, who rescues and relocates about 70 snakes a year as one of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources' licensed snake trappers. He captures everything from venomous diamondback rattlers and coral snakes to harmless garter snakes.
Bennett said his wife, Lisa, has never objected before because there's a medical center nearby with antivenin to treat snake bites.
Unable to bring the 56-pound python into the house, Bennett has given the snake a temporary home in a 50-gallon terrarium in his workshop while police search for the snake's owner and figure out how it wound up in a yard where it might have posed a threat to young children.
"Twenty-seven years of marriage and this is the first boundary she's put on me," said Bennett, 45, of Dublin.
Vanetta Walls, who has a son 9 and a daughter 2, discovered the snake in a pillowcase in her backyard on Wednesday. She thought the pillowcase was litter, until the bag began to wiggle.
"I took a stick and poked the bag," she said. "I said, 'This is a damn snake, an awful big snake.'"
A passer-by picked up the bag and threw it into a sewer, then police arrived and an officer retrieved the bag.
By the time Bennett arrived, police had cut a small hole in the bag and confirmed that it was a snake.
"At first, they thought it might be a newborn baby or a child someone had put in the bag," said Bennett, who removed the cord at the top of the bag and lifted the snake out to the oohs and ahhs of amazed onlookers.
Bennett believes the snake was a pet and that the owner became overwhelmed with the demanding care it needed to stay clean and healthy.
"He is gorgeous," Bennett said. "Someone has really taken care of him. I hope that individual will decide to contact me. You can see the love and affection they've given by the healthy condition it's in."
Had the python escaped from the bag, it could have posed a threat to young children in the neighborhood, Bennett said.
Pythons coil around their victims, squeeze the breath out of them and devour them when they lose consciousness, said Bennett, who has rescued three pythons in his many years of snake trapping.
"The children would have been perfect prey for this snake," he said. "If the weather had been warmer and the snake had been more aggressive to get out of the bag, his first instinct might have been to search for food. If the children had been out in the yard, he could have taken one and in a matter of minutes the child could have been dead."
Dublin Police Chief Wayne Cain said his department was investigating the castaway python.
"We're trying to determine if the snake was taken from somebody or if the owner just got tired of it and decided to get rid of it," Cain said.
Terry Johnson, manager of DNR's program for nongame and endangered wildlife, said Florida has a serious problem with exotic snakes, which even may be breeding in the wild, but Georgia has relatively few problems.
He said he's not suprised that a python showed up in Dublin, he's just glad it doesn't happen more often.
Walls said she's just glad the python is out of her yard.
"My daughter was running around all day playing," she said. "All I could think about was what if that thing had gotten out of the bag and got her."
Police seek owner of abandoned 7-foot python

DOUGLAS DAILY NEWS (Georgia) 03 December 05 Snake story full of misinformation (Robert Preston, Jr.)
Douglas: Earlier this week, a python reported to be seven feet long and 56 pounds was discovered in a sewer in Dublin. The snake, apparently abandoned by its owner, was found in a sack in the sewer.
The person who found the snake contacted the proper authorities and, thankfully, a Department of Natural Resources officer rescued the snake and took it safely away. Reports didn’t say what kind of snake it was, but more than likely, it was a Burmese python, one of the largest species of snakes in the world.
Burmese pythons can grow to impressive sizes; large females can approach 20 feet in captivity and top 200 pounds. This particular species of python is also known for being even-tempered and very beautiful.
As a result, Burmese are common in the pet trade. They can also be had quite inexpensively. The cute little snake in the pet store that eats one or two mice a week will soon turn into a large, potentially dangerous animal that needs an enclosure the size of a small room and meals consisting of rabbits and, in some cases, small pigs.
Many Burmese owners quickly find that their animal is too much to handle, and they abandon them in one fashion or another. That is likely what happened in the case of the Dublin snake. Its owner was tired of dealing with it, so he (or she) abandoned it. The owner at least tied the snake in a bag before turning it out.
Though the snake was safely captured and removed, there are some unfortunate aspects to the story. First of all, the size of the snake has been inaccurately reported.
I have been keeping Burmese pythons for over 13 years, and I’ve had Burmese from 18 inches to over 16 feet long, with most of my animals falling in the 10-foot range. There is no way the Dublin snake was seven feet long and 56 pounds. The weight to length ratio is way off.
From my experience, a healthy, well-fed seven-foot snake will weigh about 20 pounds. A growing Burmese adds length before it starts gaining weight. They stay relatively skinny until topping the 11- or 12-foot mark. At that point, they will begin gaining weight. And some won’t start putting on the pounds until they grow longer than that.
A 56-pound Burmese python will be about 11 feet long. And if it wasn’t a Burmese, it would likely be much lighter than 20 pounds at seven feet. So the snake is either longer than reported, or much lighter.
As an example, one of my two Burmese pythons I currently own is close to 14 feet long and tips the scales at around 65 pounds. It will be several years before his weight catches up to his length.
Another unfortunate part of the story is overstated danger of the snake. It was abandoned in a neighborhood with children and pets out and about. One person quoted in the story said that had the snake been turned out and not encased in the sack, then it likely would have attempted to overpower and eat a child.
That is preposterous.
While an adult Burmese python is quite capable of killing a human, instances of python predation upon people are almost unheard of, especially in captivity. A seven-foot python is nothing to take lightly, and one that size can inflict a painful bite, but such a snake is not going to seek a child of any size for food.
The neighborhood Yorkie or Pomeranian might be in danger, but not the kids. Even if the python’s length matched its reported weight, it is very unlikely that it would hunt a person.
It is stories like these that do little except spread false information and fear among the general public. The person that turned the snake out committed a serious crime and should be punished for it. And the potential for injury is ever-present when dealing with large pythons. However, a stray dog running around a neighborhood is much more of a danger to children than a snake, even a large one.
No exotic snake of any size should be released into the wild. And there are keepers out there who understand their responsibility as snake owners, and do their very best to ensure their animals are housed safely, securely and out of harm’s way for both the snake and the general public.
It is a responsibility that I take very seriously, and one that I hope other keepers will as well.
DOUGLAS DAILY NEWS site