TRIBUNE-STAR (Terre Haute, Indiana) 08 September 06 Indiana State University rattled by missing snake (Karin Grunden)
Terre Haute: A Pacific rattlesnake that went missing from an Indiana State University lab likely was stolen from a locked chamber, a university official said.
The snake’s cage was discovered empty about noon Friday, prompting a nearly four-hour evacuation of the science building.
Hours into a search for the snake, officials were informed that a rattler had been left in a cardboard box a day earlier at Dobbs Park Nature Center in Terre Haute.
Because of concerns over public safety, a conservation officer killed the snake Thursday and buried it in rural Vigo County. On Friday, an ISU professor confirmed it to be the missing specimen. The rattler was to be part of a continuing study of vipers’ heat-sensing facial pits.
Public safety officers are investigating the case as either a theft or burglary, said Bill Mercier, ISU director of public safety.
“We’re focusing on a particular person,” Mercier said late Friday afternoon, declining to say whether the individual has any connection with ISU. “At this point, we’re not thinking it was any kind of animal rights activist group or anything like that.”
George Bakkan, an ISU ecology and organismal biology professor, said he believed the snake may have been taken by people wanting to embarrass him.
He had planned to use the snake in research and said it was accounted for midday Wednesday, during a weekly cleaning of the cage.
When he checked the chamber Friday, he initially thought the rattler had died and that someone removed it from the locked cage. However, he soon realized that wasn’t the case. He informed the department chairman, who ordered an evacuation.
Hundreds of life sciences, physics, chemistry and geography students were told to leave the building as public safety officers stood guard. Signs posted on the doors said the building was closed, but did not provide an explanation.
A dozen faculty and graduate assistants remained in the building, searching about one-third of it — before receiving confirmation that the snake had been located a day before and was dead.
As students filtered out of the building, Marisa Korody first heard the reason for the evacuation.
The graduate student wasn’t shocked by the idea of a reptile slithering down a hallway. She’d come across a black rat snake as she walked through the Science Building in the spring.
“Nobody knew it was missing,” she said of the non-venomous snake, which was hiding under a cabinet. “It had been missing for a couple days.”
While three black rat snakes have escaped from cages in the past, Friday’s incident marked the first time a venomous species went missing, said Charles Amlaner, professor and chairman of ISU’s ecology and organismal biology department.
Seven other rattlesnakes are housed in the lab chambers, along with five non-venomous pythons and three boa constrictors, Amlaner said.
The lab is locked, as is the chamber and as are individual cages.
“Unfortunately, sometimes the best laid plans can’t solve the problem of someone who wants to get in,” Amlaner said of the triple-lock system.
After discovering the snake was missing, faculty and graduate students “tore the room apart” adjacent to the chamber.
Holding flashlights and snake hooks and with written protocol for snake bites in their pockets, the group methodically searched the room — four times in all — looking for any spot where a reptile might seek warmth.
“We pulled every drawer out. We looked through every nook and cranny,” he said. The hunt continued in other labs and classrooms.
Meanwhile, across town, word of the evacuation spread to the Dobbs Park Nature Center, where a rattler turned up a day earlier. Staff there eventually got word Friday to the university about the find.
Carissa Lovett, a naturalist, said a taped-up cardboard box was under a bench outside the center when staff arrived Thursday morning. Scrawled on the box in black permanent marker was the word: “ratler.”
“We get a lot of things dropped off here,” Lovett said Friday. “My first thought was, yeah right.”
When she and another staff member opened the box, they found a tied-off pillowcase. A touch of the case produced a tell-tale sound — a rattle.
After confirming the bag contained a venomous snake, staff members contacted the Department of Natural Resources, Lovett said.
The circumstances of the case were disturbing, she said. “It just bothered me that someone who couldn’t spell ‘rattler’ had it and dropped it off outside.”
Eventually, a conservation officer responded, taking the reptile to a rural location where he killed and buried it.
Amlaner, the ISU ecology and organismal biology department chairman, said he didn’t understand why the choice was made to destroy the snake.
Faculty and students had described the animal as “docile,” he said.
Lt. Kent Hutchins, District 5 commander for Indiana conservation officers, said the decision was based on the threat of someone being bitten or the snake escaping in a populated area.
“Our officers are not trained or equipped to handle dangerous, venomous reptiles,” Hutchins said. “Our job is law enforcement.”
Had they been aware the snake was missing from ISU, that may have altered the outcome, he said.
“It was a judgment call.”
Indiana State University rattled by missing snake

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