In the news

■ Rob Wild, a British expatriate who lives in South Africa’s Western Cape province, said he and his family were admiring their newly-decorated artificial Christmas tree when they spotted a 4-foot-long boomslang, one of the more venomous snakes in Africa, hiding among the ornaments and called in a snake catcher to take it away.

■ Keechant Sewell, 49, chief of detectives for Nassau County, N.Y., has been named New York City’s next police commissioner by Mayor-elect Eric Adams, making her the first woman to lead the nation’s largest police force when she takes office Jan. 1.

■ Alvis Parrish, 54, of Jacksonville, Fla., accused of putting a psychoactive drug in her boyfriend’s lemonade, said she put “just enough” in his drink “to shut him up” and then called law enforcement “so he wouldn’t die,” sheriff’s deputies said.

■ Lance Woods, 56, of Cypress Inn, Tenn., a former Tennessee Valley Authority worker convicted of setting up a secret camera in a women’s restroom at a TVA facility in Muscle Shoals, was fined $5,000 and placed on three years of probation.

■ Jennifer Hysell of Dallas whose pit bull terrier, Parker, ran off in Bangor, Mich., in July while Hysell was attending her father’s funeral, drove back to Michigan this week to get the dog, which was lured into a carrier in a community 11 miles away.

■ Tammy Pickhard of Lake Charles, La., said she’s now too scared to sleep in her home after she was startled awake by a truck crashing through a wall into her bedroom, cracking her headboard and shoving the bed to one side.

■ John Alvarez, a high school science teacher in Sunrise, Fla., has been fired for gross insubordination for repeatedly refusing to wear a mask in violation of Broward County School District rules that require face coverings for students and employees.

■ Theodore McKenzie, a Maryland man who had been leaving out food for two zebras that escaped in August from an exotic animal farm in Upper Marlboro, said he was “relieved that they’re safe” when the zebras were captured by their caretakers who spent weeks trying to lure them into a corral.

■ Jon Shirey, president of the Reedy Creek Fire Association, said Cinderella’s Castle at Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom in Florida, had to be evacuated when a small fire, attributed to debris from a fireworks display, started in a tree and was quickly extinguished.