He noticed something strange in his car and was stunned when he opened the hood: A 15-foot, 85-pound python
A man received a pleasant shock when he discovered a 15-foot snake inside his vehicle.
Let’s give it up for Alejandro Jaramillo, the Animal Control Officer from Garland, Texas, who stayed calm and collected when tasked with removing a yellow python hiding beneath a car’s hood.
The process of removing the 15-foot, 85-pound beast reportedly took hours to complete safely, with the size of the animal coming as something of a shock.
“It was too big—it tried to lunge at me”
“They just told me that it was going to be a snake. I didn’t know that when I arrived, it would be a 15-foot python,” Jaramillo calmly admitted, adding, “Normally, we use [snake prongs] to grab the head of the snake so you can control it. Obviously, its head was too big to be controlled by that, and it was too strong.”
“A 15-foot python doesn’t happen naturally”
“It turned around when I pulled its tail and tried to lunge at me,” Jaramillo recalled. “From there, it slithered underneath my truck and then went up into the engine bay, where I had to attempt to pull it out or lure it out.”
Snakes are ectothermic, meaning they rely on external sources of heat to regulate their body temperature. A car’s engine is a warm place to be, and the scaly beast was probably just comfortable in the dark, enclosed space, where the motor acted like an electric blanket.
The origins of where the snake came from are unclear, although experts say that it was likely a pet, given the size. “A 15-foot python doesn’t happen naturally. It has to have been fed in good condition and stuff like that. So that’s how we kind of knew; on top of that, it was banana coloured. So, that is another indication that a lot of people have like a pet (snake)” said Alberto Maldonado, the community outreach coordinator for the Garland Animal Shelter.
A few days later, the owner came forward. “The owner of the python was actually moving addresses—he was moving out of the city limits. In the meantime, he set up the snake’s enclosure and placed the python in a temporary case for a little while,” Maldonado explained.
But the snake escaped.
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“It didn’t get very far at all, if anything. It just had to cross one major road, and it was there. So I’d say about maybe 400 yards, if that.”
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