Missouri seems to be getting more than its fair share of reptile stories lately...
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UPS driver finds a python in his truck: "It's alive!"
By Valerie Schremp Hahn
Of the Post-Dispatch
08/05/2005
For at least two calm and relatively happy hours, United Parcel Service deliveryman Brian Adams drove around in his brown truck, oblivious he was toting around a 9-foot albino python.
But Adams, 41, soon found out after he pulled into the lot of the Schnucks shopping center on Highway K in O'Fallon, Mo., late Wednesday morning. When he shifted some boxes on a top shelf he saw what looked like a stuffed animal or rubber snake. Adams lowered his sunglasses, looked a little closer and saw scales.
He called his wife.
"Tina, you won't believe this, but there's a snake in the truck," he said.
He nudged aside a small box in front of the python, and its head popped up.
"It's alive!" he yelled into the phone.
Adams went into a Mail Depot Inc. store and told an employee, who called O'Fallon animal control. By then, the Burmese python had slithered onto a lower shelf, and a crowd had gathered. Adams and animal control officer Dana Howard prodded the 31-pound snake into a cloth mailbag.
Adams has no idea how the python got into the truck. UPS doesn't deliver live animals. It could have crawled inside while workers loaded the truck early Wednesday morning at the Earth City distribution center, but Adams doubts it. For the rest of his route that afternoon, he closely - and nervously - inspected the packages for holes or tears.
On Thursday, the python rested comfortably at the St. Charles County Pet Adoption Center, where it happily devoured three rats, reported director Theresa Williams. A member of the St. Louis Herpetological Society planned to pick up the python next week, she said.
As for Adams, he confidently breezed through a snake-free route Thursday.
"Today," he said, "I'm doing fine."
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