Posted on 06/10/2008 4:12:17 PM PDT by Oyarsa
BRENTWOOD, N.Y. - A Long Island animal shelter is a temporary home for a 1-foot-long snake that a mother found coiled on her 7-month-old daughter's leg as the baby slept in a crib.
Cari Abatemarco of upstate Troy says she was visiting family in Brentwood last week when her baby's cries woke her one night. She tells Newsday that she found a snake wrapped around her daughter's leg.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
1 ft long is not very long—a little garter snake can be that long. I’d rather find a little non-venemous snake than a scorpion, which is not that unusual in Texas. Does the article say what species?
Expect PETA to sue the family for animal cruelty.
How can they just drop the snake on the floor by removing the baby?
What if it was a rare specie and got hurt?
King Snake. Harmless.
Okay, someone post “The Badger Song”.
Hmm....if I found that wrapped around my sweet little six month old’s chunky thighs....well it wouldn’t make it to an animal shelter.
I wish I could sleep like that.
Eeeeeewwwwwwwwww ping!
Herpephobia nonsense.
Why is it in a “shelter,” may I ask? One foot isn’t that big, and any normal mother would have picked it up and left it an ex-snake. Or at least flung it away.
Snakes crawl onto people because they’re looking for warmth. I have had camping friends wake up with rattlers on their chests.
Most snakes that I have owned were heavy sleepers.
Aw, look at little sweetie! Our baby loves snakes.
My first thought as well. One time my cat brought a snake, draped across her mouth, into the kitchen through her cat door, and dropped it on the floor. I was supposed to be delighted with her hunting skillz, but instead I went a-smackin' with my broom...
Ping!
Winner!!
And that is a rare striped California King Snake too. I had one for a pet as a kid. Most King snakes are banded, with with yellow and dark bands around the body.
I wouldn't take this story at face value. While a California king snake is not native to Long Island, these snakes are very closely related to native species and would be similar in behavior. How many times do people wake up to find small king snakes wrapped around their children's legs? Occasionally, I've heard of these animals coming into the house. I've heard of them crawling into sleeping bags outside. I've never heard one crawling into bed with either adults or children. I know many people who raise these animals, and occasionally, a little one will escape. Many are never found. Typically, they are found under the refrigerator where they can hide from people and still enjoy the warmth from the motor and moisture from the condenser. They don't go seeking people for any reason.
One story suggested that this one may have crawled into a mattress that the family had bought and had been shipped from California. That route of entry is possible, but plenty of people buy mattresses without finding baby snakes.
Another possibility is that this family is perpetrating a hoax. They could have bought the snake at a pet store recently and just brought the thing out for this hoax. The snake would never have been near the child. They just moved it from some other container to the bucket where the animal control people found it. If we search their attic, we might find the ventilated box where the animal was originally kept.
The reason that animal rights activists might perpetrate this kind of hoax is to generate panic about pet snakes. The PETA freaks have decided that owning pet reptiles should be illegal. They actually believe that all pet ownership should be illegal, but they realize that they can't go after dogs and cats right now. Instead, they are trying to generate this kind of story in an attempt to hurt the reptile industry. Until someone can give a credible explanation of how this animal got into that crib, we shouldn't dismiss the whole incident as more fear-mongering from the PETA freaks.
Bill
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