The Not So Bright Burmese Python

In college I worked in a pet store and spent some time managing the reptile section.  This occasioned a multitude of interesting situations, probably the most interesting/crazy was the extraction of a 6 foot beach towel from a 12 foot Burmese python.

One bright morning (every morning is bright in Phoenix, Arizona) a lovely young teenage girl and her very nice mother came into the store and asked about the care and feeding of Burmese pythons.  It seems the young girl had purchased a Burmese python from her biology teacher who could no longer keep it.  Let me give you a few details about this particular species.  First, they are huge.  I mean HUGE.  Females can easily reach 15-20 feet and a girth of more than a foot.  Males are smaller but still huge (10-15 feet).  This huge, muscular body is ruled by a brain the size of a nut.  They are beautiful but potentially dangerous snakes and they defecate like a horse.

I spent a long time talking to mom and daughter about safety (never feed animal by yourself, NEVER), and what type of cage he would need, how snakes are ecothermic and need a heat source to digest their food and keep up their immune system.  They got what we in the reptile industry refer to as the “deader is better” speech–captive snakes should be fed dead rodents off tongs instead of live rodents which (believe it or not) can inflict significant bite damage to snakes.  Nice mom and daughter buy book on Burmese and one large frozen rat (which I instructed them to thaw out in a plastic bag floating in hot water–just like pork chops!, yes the reptile world is odd).

30 minutes later the phone rings and it’s nice mom who in a panicked voice says they thawed out the rat and dropped it in the cage and the snake missed it and grabbed the towel they had put inside the cage to keep the snake warm instead.  Putting aside my urge to point out blankets don’t work for animals that don’t generate their own body heat, I told nice mom to watch the snake and once he released the towel from his “death bite” he’ll sniff around and realize it’s not food and let it go.  She says thanks and hangs up.  Phone rings again a few minutes later and it’s nice mom again. I overestimated the brain power of their Burmese.  “He’s swallowing the towel!!  What should we do???”.  I advised her to take the snake to an emergency vet because if he succeeds in swallowing the towel it will cause a deadly impaction and will have to be surgically removed.  She says “Oh Crap!”, hangs up.

A few minutes later I hear screaming tires in the parking lot and look out the door to see now wild-haired, wild-eyed nice mom, nice teenager, nice brother, and nice father bolting out of a minivan, the back of which contains the not so bright, towel consuming Burmese python.  Mom runs in and says they didn’t have enough time to get to vet and that we were closer is there anything we can do???  I thought for a minute and had what is colloquially referred to as “an epiphany”.

A few days ago I had read an article in one of the reptile hobby magazines about big snake bites (”big” means larger than 6 feet and greater around than 6 inches).  The article was interesting–albeit horrific–and had a large picture of a python skull clearly showing its large, recurved–Jesus you don’t want that thing to bite you–teeth.  I realized the only thing preventing us from pulling the towel out was the fact the teeth pointed backward (evolutionarily speaking you don’t want your prey backing out of your mouth while you are swallowing it, hence this adaptation).  I grabbed a snake hook, which is like a golf club with a large metal hook on the end instead of a flattened head, and rushed outside.  If J.J. Abrams were directing this scene this is where the slow motion running would come in. 

I directed another employee to hold the snake’s  head (it took him both hands and they didn’t touch if that gives you an idea of this thing’s size), slipped the metal bar between the snake’s top teeth and the towel, and pulled the towel right out.  Nice mom and daughter are crying happy and nice dad gives me 20 bucks (not necessary but nice).  I fake blow smoke off the top of the snake hook and saunter back into the store (kidding, I just walked back in with the slimy hook and washed it). 

So kids, the moral of the story is: learn the basic anatomy of your pets in case you are ever called upon to extract something from them.

The other night we were walking around the neighborhood and I was noticing how many empty lots we still have for houses (around 40 or so).  I said to my husband,

“Bradburn is such an awesome place to live, I don’t know why we aren’t totally sold out!”.  My husband said,

“Well people drive in here and say, oh my God the yards are too small and the neighbors are too close!”.  Which it totally true.  Bradburn is so different from the surrounding suburbia–all large lot subdivisions with giant, useless setbacks and large yards–I think people go into shock when they drive in here.  It got me wondering, when did we start thinking of neighbors as something negative–something we wanted to get away from as much as we could afford to–instead of positives?  Where did the prevailing idea of being far away from other people as the ideal way to live (the “American Dream”) come from?

I have to admit, the first time we drove in Bradburn I was a little taken aback by the smaller lots and how close the houses were to each other because I was so used to seeing the suburban standard.  Interestingly enough, we originally bought in here because of the architecture and because of the walkable, mixed-use aspect.  I didn’t consider neighborhood friendliness at all at the time, but after living here for 4 years, my neighbors are by far the best thing about the neighborhood.  Knowing your neighbors well has so many benefits and is to me, the largest part of what makes Bradburn special. 

I worked for a large reptile wholesaler for a time.  This particular wholesaler had a fondness for very large pythons.  There were several gargantuan Burmese pythons at this place.  Female Burmese pythons can get really, really huge–20 foot plus huge and wider around than a truck tire.  While they are mellow snakes not prone to biting (Thank God), that huge body is controlled by a tiny little brain.  As a result, any time we would go to feed the Burmese, it would require two people.  One person to feed, one to “spot”.  The spotter’s job was to get the snake off you should it mistake you for its dinner. 

Now the Burmese, they ate pigs.  Yeah, pigs.  Small pigs, but still, PIGS.  One warm summer day, I got to work and was greeted by the nastiest smell in the universe.  The large female Burm had upchucked her pig.  I had to clean it as the other employee was incapacitated by repeated bouts of his own barfing (poor guy).  So yeah, it was as gross as you can imagine.

Fast forward four years and I have a kid.  For those of you who don’t have children, let me describe some of the things that will get on other things with a small child around.  They will piss on the floor.  They will barf on the sofa, the car, your bed.  They will wipe boogers on the walls.  They are friggin gross.  However, because of my prior experience and survival of cleaning up huge snake vomit, I was inured to this aspect of child rearing.  So there’s a silver lining to snake barf.

One of my neighbors, her house is a black hole for pets.  They go in but they don’t come out (alive anyway, or they are brought there for burial already dead).  Apprently she had some friends visiting with their two rather boisterous canines.  I’m unsure how (I was afraid to ask for the details-yeach), but the dogs somehow got to her daughter’s new pet guinea pig, and dogs, well being predators….lets just say Piggies’ stay in my friend’s household was shortened. So Piggie went into the garden, buried in a dog treat box (the final insult I’d imagine), next to my friend’s friend’s boa constrictor.  Piggie did however, get the benefit of another recitation of the Clark Griswold’s eulogy for Aunt Edna.

I don’t think my friend ever plans on moving, but if she does, I hope the next people to buy her house aren’t gardeners. If they are, they are surely going to wonder about the former residents once they starting tilling the new perennial bed.  

Sometimes…I don’t know how to explain things we do in my neighborhood.  One of my neighbors related this story:

Her long time friend had a boa constrictor, Ruby, for 8 years (which is actually a short time, boas can live 20 years plus).  Ruby went from cold-blooded to just plain cold the other night.  Her friend lives in a townhouse, and didn’t have any place he could properly inter his long and beefy friend, so being the nice, caring, somewhat twisted person my neighbor is, she volunteered her yard for Ruby’s burial.  The funeral was attended by her, her 4 year old daughter, another neighbor (who quipped, “yeah I just went over there for pizza and this is what I get”), her husband, and their 4 year old daughter, and the long time friend.

Her friend apparently dug the grave, and placed his departed friend inside. They all took turns shovelling dirt in.  Then they gathered around, lit a candle–a scented one as boa constrictors are large snakes–and recited:

Clark Griswold’s Eulogy for Aunt Edna from Vacation

I swear I am not making this up.  

This is one of the ways I know I belong in this neighborhood–it’s populated by kind hearted, sweet and twisted Gen Xers. 

I am currently debating the prudence of getting my soon to be 5 year old daughter a pet, but as I’ve had rather negative dealings with hamsters in the past, you can be sure she won’t be getting one of those.

When I was 6, my family lived in Eden Praire, Minnesota. I wanted a pet I could keep in my room.  First, my parents got me a gerbil and a Habbitrail set–this modernist plastic cage with see through tubes and small nesting areas (they still sell them).  They also got my brother Mark a gerbil and cage set-up.  Well my gerbil didn’t last long, several days later that unfortunate creature broke its neck when it got stuck in a elbow section of the Habbitrail.  I was very upset and cried but Mark laughed, apparently tempting the poetic justic Gods because his hamster froze to death (inside the house!  That’s Minnesota in the winter for you) that very same night.  To replace the gerbil, my parents bought me a hamster I for some reason named Buffy (the Habbitrail however, went in the trash). 

He lasted at least a few months and then made his escape.  He was gone a long time and we assumed that he had gotten out of the house and died-we were partially correct.  One day my mom’s friend’s visiting British daughter was in the laundry room and noticed that the sink was not draining.  So she attempted to pull out the obstruction which I imagine she thought was a hair clog-once again, partially correct.  She screamed bloody murder and we all ran in.  She had extracted the corpse of my poor hamster Buffy from the pipe; the corpse was unnaturally elongated from the suction.  I have no idea how the poor creature came to such an end, but sufficed to say I did not get any more small rodents as pets.