Plumstead Township Police Chief Duane Hasenauer didn't think danger when he saw Sid, the 13-foot-long Burmese python, slither across a field of waist-high grass after being on the loose for six weeks.
In this quiet, Bucks County community, Hasenauer just bent over and grabbed the 100-pound reptile with his bare hands on Tuesday night.
"I didn't think anything of it," Hasenauer said yesterday. "I was tired of getting all the calls from people worried about it."
Hasenauer said he talked to more neighbors concerned about Missing Sid than about big bears who are sometimes on the prowl in the township in the spring. "Some parents were so scared of the snake, they wouldn't let their children out to play," he said.
Until her escape Aug. 12, Sid lived with her owner, Thomas Esbensen, in a 8-by-10-foot cage in a house on Saw Mill Road.
Somehow, the 13-year-old snake pushed her way through the glass doors of the cage, slid over to an open back door and found freedom.
Esbensen was beside himself, particularly since he'd taken care of the reptile since she was an 18-inch baby. "It's almost like losing a girlfriend," he reportedly said. "I just don't want to see her run over."
In a flier he distributed looking for her, he wrote: "She is a tree climber so look up more than on the ground. It's slow on land and will not seek you out... . It's friendly but you have to not provoke it."
Before she slithered away, Sid was recently fed a large rat, so she probably wasn't hungry for at least two weeks.
Sid seemed to be doing just fine Tuesday night when two New Britain men driving on Saw Mill Road saw her sliding into a field near the Route 611 bypass.
They called police and Hasenauer showed up and found runaway Sid in tall grass. "It was a tug of war," Hasenauer said. "She did not want to be caught. She was pulling back and hissing."
Hasenauer, with the help of Doylestown Township Officer Dorothy Kreuter, attempted to trap the snake in dog poles - sticks with nooses on the end used to catch strays.
They got one pole around Sid's middle, but then Sid reached back and bit Kreuter.
"It's not a big deal," Kreuter said yesterday. "I don't know why the media is making such a fuss."
Hasenauer was able to get the other pole wrapped around Sid's neck and lifted her into his trunk."I'm glad we caught it so people can feel safe again," Hasenauer said.
Link to Story