Recently,pythons in the Everglades proliferated until they're a menace to other wildlife. The rangers are now hunting them. Pythons? How'd they get there? By dumb-az pet owners turning them loose after they got tired of them. Same thing with piranhas. They're not indigenous. Stupid pet owners have dumped them there after they bit off their finger tip and swallowed their pet guppy. Cops have to deal with these idiots. Two come to mind.
The first Bozo lived in Royal Harbor. We got a call that his python had disappeared. On entering the house, you had to walk by homemade screen cages full of snakes, his "pets." Several of the doors were unlocked or ajar. Some of the ajar ones were empty. "These supposed to be empty?" I asked.
"No, but they're not poison snakes. They're around here somewhere."
No comfort there. What snake lovers don't realize is that to the rest of us all snakes are repulsive and poisonous. We don't want to be in the same state with one. He moved to one of the cages that was unlocked, "Probably ought to latch this. Copperhead."
His problem, aside from being stupid, was that he'd just fed his seven-foot python and he couldn't find him. Said the thing would hole up for weeks now since it'd been a big meal. I didn't ask what that meal was but hoped it was one of his off-spring who were snake nuts, too.
So we're crawling around looking for this critter and I'm as jumpy as Jessie Jackson at a grand jury investigation, thinking there's a snake under every tea cup. I get tired and sit on the couch. Something under me moves. I jump up.
'Oh," Bozo says, "why didn't I think of that?" He tips the couch back and part of the ticking has been pulled loose. And here's this nasty damn thing interwoven among the springs. Bozo was ecstatic and profuse in his thanks for my help. I got the hell outta there.
About six months later I returned to his snake's den. "Missing a snake?" I asked.
He got a sheepish look on his face and said, "I was just getting ready to call you. . ."
"Car just ran over one, about six-feet long, two streets over," I said, "thought it might be yours."
"Oh, no," he whimpered, "my new boa. He wandered off and. . ."
We'd contacted the animal and wildlife people before about this clown but they could do nothing. Finally, he got tired of the things and got rid of them. I suspect by dumping them in the Everglades.
Another dope, used to carry his seven-foot python around in public. We were always getting calls from terrified folks he'd encountered. "It's perfectly safe," he'd say, all the while wrestling the thing to keep it from coiling around his neck. One day he brought the snake into the Sheriff's Office lobby causing me to have a meaningful dialogue with him, explaining how he could avoid incarceration and his snake an untimely demise. He was duly terrified and we had no calls about him for almost a year. Then he stepped on his carrot again.
He'd taken the thing to the mall. There, he was showing it to a frightened mother and her two-year-old baby. Without warning, the beast unhinged its jaws and clamped them over the head of the child. It took some effort to pry the monster loose. The baby suffered bites on the top of her head and chin from the snake's teeth. And long-term psychological damage.
The turd went to jail for a time but wonderful retribution came a few years later when a civil jury wiped him out financially.
The first Bozo lived in Royal Harbor. We got a call that his python had disappeared. On entering the house, you had to walk by homemade screen cages full of snakes, his "pets." Several of the doors were unlocked or ajar. Some of the ajar ones were empty. "These supposed to be empty?" I asked.
"No, but they're not poison snakes. They're around here somewhere."
No comfort there. What snake lovers don't realize is that to the rest of us all snakes are repulsive and poisonous. We don't want to be in the same state with one. He moved to one of the cages that was unlocked, "Probably ought to latch this. Copperhead."
His problem, aside from being stupid, was that he'd just fed his seven-foot python and he couldn't find him. Said the thing would hole up for weeks now since it'd been a big meal. I didn't ask what that meal was but hoped it was one of his off-spring who were snake nuts, too.
So we're crawling around looking for this critter and I'm as jumpy as Jessie Jackson at a grand jury investigation, thinking there's a snake under every tea cup. I get tired and sit on the couch. Something under me moves. I jump up.
'Oh," Bozo says, "why didn't I think of that?" He tips the couch back and part of the ticking has been pulled loose. And here's this nasty damn thing interwoven among the springs. Bozo was ecstatic and profuse in his thanks for my help. I got the hell outta there.
About six months later I returned to his snake's den. "Missing a snake?" I asked.
He got a sheepish look on his face and said, "I was just getting ready to call you. . ."
"Car just ran over one, about six-feet long, two streets over," I said, "thought it might be yours."
"Oh, no," he whimpered, "my new boa. He wandered off and. . ."
We'd contacted the animal and wildlife people before about this clown but they could do nothing. Finally, he got tired of the things and got rid of them. I suspect by dumping them in the Everglades.
Another dope, used to carry his seven-foot python around in public. We were always getting calls from terrified folks he'd encountered. "It's perfectly safe," he'd say, all the while wrestling the thing to keep it from coiling around his neck. One day he brought the snake into the Sheriff's Office lobby causing me to have a meaningful dialogue with him, explaining how he could avoid incarceration and his snake an untimely demise. He was duly terrified and we had no calls about him for almost a year. Then he stepped on his carrot again.
He'd taken the thing to the mall. There, he was showing it to a frightened mother and her two-year-old baby. Without warning, the beast unhinged its jaws and clamped them over the head of the child. It took some effort to pry the monster loose. The baby suffered bites on the top of her head and chin from the snake's teeth. And long-term psychological damage.
The turd went to jail for a time but wonderful retribution came a few years later when a civil jury wiped him out financially.
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