A woman and her granddaughter were ssssssscared to see a 9-foot boa constrictor in their garden.
Cindy Schmitz recalled relaxing in her Derby, NY, home when she heard a neighbor scream.
“I had no idea what was going on. I ran around the side of the house, and there it was. The snake,” she told ABC affiliate WKBW-TV. “At first, I was terrified. I’d never seen anything like it.”
Boa constrictors are typically native to Central and South America, but had somehow ended up on her front lawn.
As Schmitz and her neighbors tried to wrangle the snake, she called the Erie County Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
Cindy Schmitz was with her 2-year-old granddaughter at the time the reptile was spotted. WKBW ABC Buffalo
The boa constrictor is currently up for adoption or available to be reclaimed by its owner. ABC BuffaloResponder and animal rescue investigator Officer Jennifer Maleskis said upon arriving, “Quite honestly, this was the largest one I’d ever come across, and I did a ‘Wow!’ ”
Maleskis is assuming the snake was a former pet that was released into the wild.
“The process of ‘dumping,’ or releasing exotic pets and animals into the wild after a period of domestication, is pretty common in Western New York. However, the animals are usually set up for failure. They either hurt themselves … or in this case, they can hurt you,” she said.
“We don’t know exactly how this happened … but there will be an investigation into this. Dumping, while hard to prove, is something that can cause real danger, and there are punishments involved here.”
The snake is at one of the Erie County SPCA facilities and “is currently up for adoption, or claim,” according to WKBW-TV.
