Hiss-teria at Bronx home
8-FOOT BOA UNCOILED FROM LIGHT FIXTURE
It was a 911 coil they’ll never forget.
A crew of NYPD Emergency Services Unit cops captured an 8-foot red tail boa constrictor that was wrapped around a light fixture outside a Bronx home Friday morning. And neighbors say a second, even bigger snake might still be at large.
The snake in custody might have slipped through police hands without the NYPD’s unofficial snake charmer, Detective Jose Otero.
“I sort of have a lot of experience,” said Otero, a 21-year veteran of the department. “I have snakes as pets.”
Neighbors said the enormous snake, along with an even bigger one, was left behind when the residents moved out two months ago. The larger reptile went on the lam last year, leaving the one inside for Otero to find — making the 7:33 a.m. call his fourth snake summons of the year.
Upon arrival at the home near E. 172nd St. and Fteley Ave. in Soundview, Otero knew this snake would not be easily charmed.
“It was very agitated,” Otero said. “It was hissing and right by the door, which made it dangerous. People next door were afraid that it was going to get into their house, so no one was going in and out.”
Otero and his coworkers on ESU Truck 8 first moved the onlookers back for their own safety.
Then Otero grabbed his trusty “snake pole” — a handheld grabbing tool used to snag items off shelves in grocery stores, since retrofitted to handle reptiles. He secured the agitated snake’s head and unwrapped it from the pole, holding on firmly until the reptile calmed down.
As he held the snake by the tail, Otero asked a neighbor for a pillow case. The neighbor provided a small throw pillowsized case, but “it was not going to fit,” Otero joked. The neighbor returned with an oversized cotton pillow case that both held the snake and allowed it to breathe.
Next-door neighbor Deidre Skerritt, 24, came home from work to find the cops outside her door. Before she could ask what was going on, the officers filled her in.
“That’s when they said to me, ‘There’s an 8-foot python on the mailbox next door,’ ” she recalled. “I looked at it, and my eyes opened really wide. I wasn’t expecting that.”
She and her sister Faith, 19, said the snake was inside the house since March and likely came up from the basement to enjoy the weather.
NYPD Special Operations Chief Harry Wedin praised Otero’s snake-wrangling skills on Twitter after the snake was relocated to Animal Care Centers of New York City.
“A #Bronx resident left his house this morning to find this unexpected ssssssneaky visitor by his mailbox,” Wedin tweated. “#ESU was quick to respond and Detective Otero took control of the 8 foot python.”
Red-tailed boa constrictors come from South America and are non-venomous. They prefer to kill their prey with a good squeeze — but that doesn’t mean they won’t snap at someone.
“When people try to catch one of these snakes the call always comes in as a snake bite,” said Otero.
Even before the sisters provided details on the snake, Otero was sure it belonged to a neighbor.
“It was heavy and well fed and its owner kept its coat clear,” said Otero, the owner of more than two dozen snakes and reptiles in his life. “It was definitely someone’s snake.”
The Skerritt sisters said a second, larger snake with white, yellow, orange and black markings remained on the loose after bolting the house in March.
“The one that went missing is bigger than the one we saw today,” said Deidre. “They lost that one.”