|
Snake ends up in sink
By Mia Thomas
Record Reporter
A New Westminster woman received a shock early Wednesday when she walked into her kitchen shortly after 4:30 a.m.
Looking into the sink, the 31-year-old woman noticed an unexpected visitor.
A brown-and-orange snake, which turned out to be a ball python, was curled up in there.
"It was bigger than your normal garden, garter snake," said Staff Sgt. Casey Dehaas, spokesperson for the New Westminster Police Service, of the reptile, which turned out to be about 1.2 metres long.
He explained they're available in some local pet stores.
"They make a nice pet. They're not dangerous."
The woman called police, who arrived shortly afterwards at the apartment in the 1000 block of Sixth Avenue.
Const. Jason Gelderman, one of the newer officers in New Westminster, got to practise his reptile-wrangling skills and got the snake into a box.
"This time it didn't slither away," said Dehaas, referring to the last time a snake was seen in the neighbourhood.
In June 2005, two people living in an apartment building at 320 Ninth St. reported seeing "a very large snake" on the grounds of their apartment block.
One saw it shortly before 12:30 a.m. and the other a couple hours later.
That snake was never found, but Dehaas said it's unlikely this is the same one, particularly given the time span and cold weather.
Ball pythons are from Africa and need warmer temperatures than they'd get in B.C.'s outdoors.
This week's snake was most likely a more recent 'slither'-away.
"Somehow it escaped from somewhere in that apartment, and it got into the sewer system and crawled up into the sink," Dehaas said.
The ball python was taken back to the police station where it was put in the watch commander's office until someone from animal control was able to come by later in the morning.
mthomas@burnabynow.com
published on 01/20/2007
| 
