Posted on 09/05/2006 7:04:17 AM PDT by Abathar
LANESVILLE, Ind. -- A 23-year-old man who was caring for a 14-foot snake in southern Indiana was found dead Monday night.
Officials did not know how the man died and would not speculate.
The body of the man, identified as Patrick Von Allmen, was to go to the Kentucky Medical Examiner's Office in Louisville for an autopsy Tuesday.
Mark Farmer, an Indiana Department of Natural Resources spokesman, said Von Allmen was found in a shed in Lanesville and that the 14-foot reticulated python was found loose in the shed.
The snake was captured and returned to the man's family.
Indiana law doesn't restrict ownership of pythons because they are non-venemous. They kill their prey by squeezing.
Pit bulls aren't poisonous, either.
I had one for a long time, years ago.
They do recognize their owners by scent. She did, once in a while, show an unwholesome interest in the cat, but there were no mishaps.
The only trouble we had was that they do sense heat, and she liked to crawl into bed with us on cool evenings. She slept on top of the blankets, but was quite heavy, and that part was a nuisance.
I would tell horrified visitors, "Think of her as a cuddly vacuum cleaner hose with eyes", but it did not seem to help much.
Keeping them well-fed is important when they grow up.
Having a pet who could be in the kitchen, the hallway, and the living room all at once was a feature.
Cold Comfort Farm...something very nasty in the woodshed.
The TV host I mentioned (Austin Stevens...don't know if you've ever heard of him) said that a mature reticulated python could,in fact,swallow a man and he claimed that there are documented cases of that having happened.
Hehehehe. Your comment made me laugh out loud!
My ceiling tiles are 2' wide, and I just counted off 7 of them. There is a snowball's chance in h*ll I would want to handle one of those things alone without a chainsaw nearby....
Snakes are just a muscle with a spine and an attitude.
My husband used to keep snakes, and picks up almost every one he sees.
A 4 foot long rat snake gave him problems when it decided IT had caught him, and firmly wrapped itself around his forearm. Hubby spent the next half hour extracting himself from it.
Being caught around the neck by a reptile who feeds itself in that manner has GOT to be a terrifying was to go.
(shudder)
You actually had a 12' plus snake loose in your house?
Now that's an ambitious creature...four feet long and fixin' to snack on a six foot long guy!
In the documentary I mentioned Austin Stevens said that reticulated pythons are at least 20 feet long when mature and he said there have been reports of ones 30 feet long.
(double shudder)
Not anything I would classify as a 'pet'.
----
Give the guy a Darwin Award and call it a day! :-)
Officials did not know how the man died and could not 'squeeze' it out of him.
Isn't everyone's?
HA!
Dunno, but if the family decides to cook it up for dinner, you'll have-
Monty Python's Frying Carcass
She was barely ten feet. Funny thing, when we got her as a baby, the pet shop sold them by the foot. As if they had them on a reel out back and cut off as much as one wanted.
She liked to play in the bathtub..with the water running, she would stick her snout in the stream and just (sit or something) there and groove on it.
After a few years the pet shop did not welcome us any more, as they began having problems selling the guineau pigs to us, and later, bunnies.
So we finally trained her to accept dead squirrells. They generally prefer "fresh" food, and some can be trained, and many never do accept road kill.
WARNING: Playing with your snake can be dangerous to your health.
Are goldfish pets, even though they aren't cuddly, can't show affection and remain at a distance in water?
"Indiana law doesn't restrict ownership of pythons"
so there's no resctrictions on constrictors?
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