While I agree with many of your sentiments, I’m still stuck waaaay back at the beginning of this situation:
What is there about a snake in a birdhouse that a) motivates someone to call the police, b) motivates the police to dispatch someone to the scene, and c) then motivates a police officer to discharge his weapon, regardless of the type of ammo used, direction of discharge, etc, etc.
See, I’m just not “getting” where this was a situation that required police involvement, and even if the person making the call to the police thought this required police involvement, I’m still completely clueless as to why a snake in a birdhouse would merit police involvement.
I believe the police were dispatched because the municipality’s animal control officer position is vacant.