When I worked at Animal Control we used to get a lot of calls to remove snakes in basements. People would be absolutely terrified and the description was always that it was a huge snake - 12 feet long 5 inches wide and vicious. Of course we’d get out there and it would be a little ring neck or maybe a baby black snake only a foot long and thin as a pencil.
One day we got the standard call about a huge 12 foot long snake in the basement terrifying the family etc. So our tech gets out there and she’s carrying a pillow case because that was how we would transport these baby snakes so we could release them elsewhere. The homeowner opens the door and takes one look at her, one look at the pillowcase, and looks back at her and says, “That’s not going to be big enough for this snake.”
Well, this was not this tech’s first snake call and she’s used to these exaggerated stories. So she kind of condescendingly says to the homeowner, “Well, let me go take a look at it and then we’ll see what I need.” So the homeowner points her to the basement. She gets down there and by gawd the snake really was 12 feet long and 5 inches thick. It was someone’s pet boa that had escaped and somehow got into the guy’s house. The tech apologizes to the homeowner, and tells him he was absolutely right that the pillowcase was not going to be enough. She finally ended up borrowing a trashcan from the guy and it took the two of them to lift the snake and coil it into the bottom of the trashcan so she could transport to the animal shelter.
We never did find the owner. It was one of those yellow boas and was a good looking healthy snake. We finally ended up adopting it out to a guy who had snakes and knew how to take care of them.
Working at an animal shelter was never dull.
