A Bronx tail: 8-ft. boa at mailbox!
This sure wasn’t snail mail.
A Bronx resident received a scaly surprise delivery on Friday — an 8-foot red-tailed boa constrictor, police said.
“A #Bronx resident left his house this morning to find this unexpected ssssssneaky visitor by his mailbox. #ESU was quick to respond and Detective Otero took control,” the NYPD tweeted.
The department’s resident snake wrangler, Detective Jose Otero, was called in around 7:30 a.m. when residents spotted the snake outside a house on Fteley Avenue in Soundview.
Otero said that when cops arrived they found the serpent “hissing” — and its tail wrapped around a lighting fixture at the front of the house. It was “definitely agitated.”
The detective, who has owned a number of pet reptiles over the years, said he used a snake hook to “gently press the snake’s head so [he] could unwrap the tail” and get it under control.
Otero then bagged the serpent with some help from a neighbor, who gave the officer a cotton pillowcase to help safely transport the boa to an Animal Care Centers of NYC location.
“This is the biggest snake so far [this year],” the 21-year veteran said of the red-tailed boa, which was the fourth he captured this year.
The detective said he’s lost count of how many loose snakes he’s wrangled since joining the Emergency Service Unit 18 years ago— but recalled pulling them from a number of random places, including toilets and vehicle engines.
Boa constrictors are not even remotely indigenous to the Big Apple. This one was likely someone’s unwanted pet.