Startled Tenant Finds Snake Eating Pet’s Food In His Kitchen
Posted December 11, 2008 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Imagine walking into your house and finding an uninvited guest having a meal in your kitchen.
Sound strange? It gets even weirder.
The ‘guest’ in question was a three foot long ball python (top left) – and it may have been keeping the tenant company for as long as six months without him knowing it was living with him.
The Collingwood man walked into his kitchen on Wednesday afternoon and discovered the slithering serpent making a meal of his pet’s cat food.
The feline wasn’t happy and actually began to attack the snake, which is too small to make a meal out of the kitty. ” There were concerns it would eat cats,” OSPCA spokesman Mark Beauchamp reveals. “That’s not true. They would eat small mice not cats at all.”
Still, his presence was a shock to the tenant who quickly got out of the kitchen and called his landlord.
Both men spent several nervous minutes corralling the creature into a box and securing it, before calling police. Initial reports indicated the snake was a boa constrictor and that it was six feet long. But the actual animal seemed much less menacing.
Experts removed the serpent from the home and took it to the OSPCA, where it’s been placed with an exotic animal specialist for the time being.
They’ve nicknamed him “Kringle” after the holiday season and claim he’s in fairly good shape, despite being forced to finally reveal himself when he got hungry.
“He’s got a few bumps and bruises and scratches from the cats,” points out Beauchamp. “We would like to emphasize to the public and reassure them that there is no safety or health concerns at all.”
Still, for some, it’s kind of uncomfortable to imagine you’ve been living alongside such a creepy crawler for half a year without knowing it was sharing your premises. How did it get there?
A previous tenant who moved out of the Oak St. apartment in 2007 thought his pet had disappeared and he was forced to leave without him when he vacated the apartment in the summer.
He had no idea he was simply passing on his pet to his unsuspecting replacement. Officials think it was snaking its way through the walls.
“We took over this building to manage it…and the tenant before, he left in June,” reveals property manager John Wall. “It was coming out at nighttime and eating the cat food. You know, to sort of keep itself fit.”
