SAUK CENTRE, Minn. – A nearly six foot long snake found its way into a Sauk Centre neighborhood leaving residents baffled.
“This lady comes out frantic saying, there’s a snake in your bush,” resident Vanessa Keppers said.
A huge black snake had slid into a bush in the Keppers family’s front yard.
The Keppers wasted no time to take action. Nick Keppers grabbed a large ice pick and was able to kill the snake before it could leave the bush.
“We were lucky that Nick got the snake before the snake got him,” Nick’s brother Zachary Keppers said in his front yard.
“It was hissing. It was spitting, it was just angry,” Vanessa said.
With the snake dead the question is, where did this thing come from and what is it?
“Not being in a zoo, that’s probably the largest snake that I’ve seen on someone’s property in the city of Sauk Centre,” Sauk Centre Police Chief Brian Friedrichs said. “I don’t know if it was a native Minnesota snake, or if it was an exotic one that was brought in.”
The Keppers said they contacted the DNR but they say the DNR were unable to respond to the incident.
The large snake entering the neighborhood has caused the Keppers to investigate the reptile themselves and they are pretty confident they know what slithered into their yard.
“It’s a Black Mamba,” Vanessa said. “They’re poisonous; they have a black underside which this snake did, and then it has a full black body.”
Black Mambas are native to Africa and are considered to be one of the most poisonous and dangerous snakes on the planet.
KSAX contacted the Sauk Rapids DNR to try and figure out what the mystery snake actually was.
“At this point we’re leaning towards a rat snake but were still not 100 percent positive,” DNR Wildlife Manager Fred Bengtson said. “Rat snakes are a species of special concern, they’re fairly uncommon in Minnesota and they normally occur in extreme south eastern Minnesota,”
The DNR also said that there has never been a documented natural rat snake in Stearns County. This means if the snake was natural, it would be the first of it’s kind in that area.