Posted on 05/19/2007 6:34:27 PM PDT by Graybeard58
TORRINGTON -- Ray Beauchesne would really appreciate if people could keep a lookout for his pet.
She's a yellowish hue, 10 feet long, enjoys snacking on whole Rotisserie chickens and might respond to the name Ana. She has been missing for more than a week.
Ana, a 7-year-old yellow anaconda, escaped a week ago through a hole in a closet in Beauchesne's apartment, where the snake has the spare bedroom all to herself. Beauchesne, who realized she was missing when he went to check on her last Friday, reported her missing to the city's animal control officer after he was unable to find her over the weekend.
"I had her in the bedroom and the closet door shut, but forgot part of the closet wall was missing," he said. "She must have opened up the closet door somehow and went out."
The Department of Environmental Protection came looking for her on Tuesday to no avail after city police contacted them about the snake.
DEP officials predicted Ana probably died because it was too cold outside.
But Beauchesne, 34, hasn't given up hope. "I've been going out every day to find her," he said. He might want to hope he finds her before city officials do.
The animal control officer, Tony Bonacassio, said he would likely kill Ana as a self-defense measure if she is sighted. He wouldn't explain in detail how the snake would be killed, but said it's not an event a person would want to witness.
The largest snake he's ever dealt with in his 20 years as Torrington's animal control officer was removing a 6-foot-long python from the hallway of an apartment building several years ago. In that case, he said he used a snake handling tool to capture it and put it in a sack.
But when asked if he could use that device on a 10-foot snake he said, "I don't know. I've never tried it on anything that big."
Beauchesne said he takes time to handle and play with the snake daily. "She's not vicious, her teeth are small and curved inward," he said. Ana isn't interested in live food, eating a Rotisserie chicken about once every two weeks.
After she went through the hole in the closet wall, Beauchesne believes Ana made her way through a basement vent and into the great outdoors. Beauchesne lives with his girlfriend and three cats in a small apartment complex on a dead-end road, Birge Street, surrounded in the back and sides by woods and in the front by houses.
He's had Ana for about two months after he bought her from an acquaintance who no longer wanted her and planned to kill her, Beauchesne said.
"I couldn't see them killing it," he said.
Police Chief Robert Milano said this was an unusual occurrence.
"I remember that movie," he said, referring to the 1997 thriller "Anaconda" featuring Jennifer Lopez about documentary makers terrorized by a giant snake. "They were huge."
I read somewhere that the peace corps had a chapter in their manual about how to cut yourself free from the mouth of an anaconda (using a pen-knife).
My girlfriend and her husband were driving down I-20 in E.Tx late one night......and ran over (actually straddled it with thier truck) an albino Anaconda which they estimated at being 20ft long. She used to work at the local zoo... which is why she was able to identify what kind it was. Scary stuff.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.