Don't mean to get in no pizzin contest here.......but they're just a tad bigger in Sacramento. This is a Bermise Python at 15 feet and over two hundred pounds.
An 18 year old girl was sitting at a desk in a relatives whearhouse when she felt something warm and smooth brush up against her foot. You can imagine the look on her face when she looked under the desk and saw the head of a snake that was as large as her own head, laying there next to her foot. [smiley=nervous.gif] Here's the story. While they didn't show a picture of the actual snake in question, they show the owner with another of his snakes.
x - close Recent Stories By Erika Chavez
Skip Jackson gets cozy Tuesday with Mr. P, an 8-foot-long Burmese python. Another pet, 15-foot python Miss Hiss, gave a woman a scare Sunday when she stumbled upon it at work.
Sacramento Bee/Randy Pench
Case solved: Python's a wily pet
By Erika Chavez -- Bee Staff Writer
Published 2:15 am PDT Wednesday, July 13, 2005
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Mystery solved: Miss Hiss belongs to the neighborhood nudist.
The 15-foot-long Burmese python discovered in a Sacramento warehouse Sunday night is the 15-year companion to Skip Jackson, a plastics fabricator known as much for his nudity as for his affinity for reptiles.
Jackson, 52, lives and works in an industrial building down the street from the warehouse where an 18-year-old woman stumbled upon his python. Miss Hiss, he said, escaped sometime last week when he unknowingly poked a hole in its cage with a forklift.
The python slithered to freedom and turned up at Arnold Morairty's warehouse, just down the road. Morairty's granddaughter Melody Martinez found the snake while she was cleaning. Officers from Sacramento County's Animal Care and Regulation department corralled Miss Hiss in a garbage can before taking it to the Sacramento Zoo, where it's being held in quarantine.
A lifelong reptile lover, Jackson takes in castoffs from owners who become overwhelmed by their pets' size. His current stock includes two other Burmese pythons and a boa constrictor.
"Most people can't handle them when they get that big," Jackson said. "They get scary, so they just let them go into the street or the sewer."
Miss Hiss - at 15 feet long, 200 pounds and roughly the girth of an adult thigh - has gotten loose two other times in 15 years, Jackson said."Snakes are escape artists. If they can find a way to escape, they will," he said.
Some of Morairty's employees suspected the reptile belonged to Jackson. Morairty said he gets along fine with his neighbor, despite Jackson's habit of walking around with the reptiles wrapped around his shoulders and, occasionally, working in the nude.
"They say the difference between eccentric and crazy is how much money you make," Jackson said. "So I guess that makes me crazy."
There are rules for keeping such exotic pets, though there are no sanctions for allowing a pet snake to get loose, said Pat Claerbout, director of animal care for Sacramento County.
In Sacramento County, any owner with a snake that is venomous or more than 8 feet long must get a permit (Burmese pythons are not venomous). An owner can be fined for not getting a necessary permit after several warnings, she said.
Miss Hiss' damaged cage will also have to be repaired and inspected before Jackson can be reunited with the reptile, and he'll have to get a permit, Claerbout said.
The county also will ask Jackson to reimburse the cost of retrieving, transporting and boarding the snake, Claerbout said.
Reptile remorse is common among well-meaning pet owners, said Christopher Hussey, rescue and adoption coordinator for the Northern California Herpetological Society.
"We get hundreds of phone calls a month from people with reptiles that got big," Hussey said. The nonprofit group tries to find adoptive homes for as many large iguanas, Colombian red tail boas and Burmese pythons as possible, but cannot handle every plea for help.
The culprit: misinformation and misguided notions, he said.
"Pet stores carry pythons because they can get them cheap, and don't tell customers it can become a 300-pound snake," Hussey said.
Owners make things worse by "power-feeding" the snakes as entertainment for friends.
"That increases their metabolism and they grow at a rapid rate," Hussey said. "They don't grow that fast out in the wild."
Miss Hiss eats four rabbits a month and lives in a climate-controlled, 8-foot-by-4-foot cage, Jackson said.
On occasion, Jackson lets her loose in a field next to his warehouse, so she can slither in the grass under his supervision.
"She's tame, not real aggressive," Jackson said. "The only time she gets aggressive is when she's hungry. Then I know it's time to feed her."
Jackson has always been fascinated with snakes and finds them beautiful.
"They don't fetch, they don't come when they're called, but I think they're cool," he said.
Miss Hiss can rise 3 feet off the ground with no support, and can climb a 6-foot wall, Jackson said.
Burmese pythons are all muscle and "incredibly strong," Hussey said, and need to be handled with care.
"With that kind of muscle, they can push up the lid to almost any tank," he said. "I have seen a Burmese push a door off its hinges."
Though they are not particularly dangerous to humans, they might bite, Hussey said. Any reptiles released in Sacramento would die when the weather turns cold, he said.
Prospective reptile owners need to educate themselves, Hussey said.
Claerbout agreed, bemoaning the many exotic pets given up or abandoned by overwhelmed owners.
Potbellied pigs are always in healthy supply at the county shelter, she said. Last month, someone left a bearded dragon in the night drop box with a note explaining they could no longer care for him.
"People just should not take these animals on if they're not prepared to care for them," she said.
For more information, visit the Northern California Herpetological Society's Web site at
www.norcalherp.com.
Here's a picture of the owner, holding one of his smaller snakes. This one looks like a brother to the one from Virginia. [smiley=huepfenlol2.gif]
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