Lake Hopatcong Boa

This is all over our local news...unbelieveable.
http://www.nj.com/morris/index.ssf/2...incart_m-rpt-1

-A reptile specialist with more than 20 years of experience handling and breeding large snakes believes the animal is not a local water snake, but is a boa constrictor ranging between 12 to 15 feet in length.

I don't have that many years or a degree in zoology but that's one huge boa

-The expert mentioned he is fairly confident he'll be able to track down the animal within a few hours because of his experience with large reptiles but posted earlier about
how unless someone gets lucky we probably will not catch it an will be around for months.

With that much space I don't know how much his experience will factor in. Pretty sure I heard the hundreds of 'hunters" in Florida only uncovered 63 pythons in a few weeks.

-This big a snake would be aggressive.

I never heard of aggression being a factor of size but don't doubt after being out in the wild a bit rather then handled as a pet its more aggressive.


I'm wondering if this article misquoted the expert or if I'm reading it wrong. I understand many people don't have a great deal of knowledge about reptiles but after reading this I think almost anyone can see something isn't right & it probably explains why "the attitudes of the some of the locals seemed if they were not taking the situation seriously"

Looks like a commercial for a new SyFy Channel movie. So dumb.

Yeah it really does reek of a bad show. If you dig through those other links you'll see that the original estimate on this "Boa Constrictor" is a laughable 15-20 ft.

In truth though, ultimately, I feel bad for the snake. I know this lake well. There is a tremendous amount of boat traffic on any given weekend (weekdays are relatively light) and almost no undeveloped shoreline....its a recipe for problems especially when you factor in all of the partying that goes on.

Something about this seems like the texas man who swore a king rat was a python and he wouldn't let his kids out until texas fish and game come out to kill it

Sooooooo, they're now saying its, in fact, a Green Anaconda. Still technically a boa though

Update is here:
http://www.nj.com/morris/index.ssf/2...dent_says.html