Snake in the grass
Surprise encounter with a boa constrictor
By Tim Kelly

SOUTHOLD--Mark Wittemann wasn't sure what he saw stretched out on the side of the North Road, but he knew it was something different.

The service technician for Burt's Reliable heating was heading to a call on Friday afternoon when, as he recalls it, "out of the corner of my eye I saw this thing on the side of the road." Thinking it to be a rubber snake, and so a good prop to have during the Halloween season, he doubled back.

When he parked his van on the side of the road west of Horton's Lane, he noticed the "thing," which he describes as about seven feet long, wasn't sitting still. It was, well, slithering toward an open field on the south side of the highway.

"It really concerned me when I saw it heading toward a house with little bikes outside," the Mattituck resident said. "I knew there were kids there."

He called the police, but by the time the department and a representative of the North Fork Animal Welfare League arrived, the snake was gone. But from the looks of a photo taken by Mr. Wittemann (which is printed above) there's no reason for alarm, said Dr. Rob Pisciotta of the North Fork Animal Hospital in Southold.

The image is that of a boa constrictor, which Dr. Pisciotta described as a "pretty safe snake." The one Mr. Wittemann came across probably was a pet that either escaped or was abandoned, he said. They're not poisonous and don't make a habit of attacking people.

"I don't think anybody should panic about this being on the loose," Dr. Pisciotta said. "They are as afraid of us as we would be of them." Although boas do bite and kill their prey by squeezing it (hence the name constrictors), they are not an aggressive species, said Dr. Pisciotta.

"Most people who have a snake that size come in with them wrapped around their shoulders," he said. "They're used to being handled."

Mr. Wittemann didn't know any of that at the time. Hoping to hold off the snake until the police arrived, he placed his foot on the animal's tail, a move the snake didn't appreciate. "It spun around and came right at me," he said. When the snake started making for a briar thicket, he went to his truck and took out a 10-foot section of copper pipe. His goal was to keep it by the side of the road so that someone other than him could capture it.

He didn't succeed and the snake eventually vanished into the underbrush. When the police arrived, along with Gillian Wood-Pultz, the director of the town's animal shelter, they joined Mr. Wittemann in searching without success for the constrictor.

"I had mixed feelings on that," Mr. Wittemann said. "I'm not a snake fan."

Coming across the scene, Burt's Reliable owner John Romanelli stopped to find out why two of his company's vehicles were stopped on the side of the road with two police cars. "They told me it was a seven-foot snake and I left," Mr. Romanelli said. "I don't like snakes. That's why I voted that day to hire five more cops."

Ms. Wood-Pultz said over the years she's received a number of calls about snakes on the loose, including a garter snake that was dining on a carp from a back-yard pond, but she's never encountered an "exotic" species.

Going by the photo, Dr. Pisciotta said the animal appears to be healthy and well fed. "It could be eating rodents out there," he said.

Since nonindigenous snakes don't fare well in cold weather, Dr. Pisciotta fears for the animal's survival. "Hopefully someone will find it again before it gets too cold," he said. "I'd look for him in sunny spots or on rocks, someplace to warm himself up."

The lost snake case comes about 14 months after the town received reports of a monkey on the loose in Cutchogue. It turned not to be a monkey, but an African bushbaby, a lemur-like primate, which may have been abandoned. After its capture, the animal was bundled off to a primate sanctuary.

"People have some weird pets," said town police Captain Marty Flatley. "Whatever happened to dogs and cats?"