The Search for a large snake spotted hiding near the new Veterans Memorial Bridge in South Omaha has drawn a lot of attention.
The snake was captured Monday thanks to a cooperative effort between several local entities.
Humane Society
investigators located the snake in a drain pipe around 10 Monday morning.
“The last couple of days this things had the neighbor little kids scared,” neighbor Angelo McIntire said. “The snake had its head out of the pipe about (two feet) they went and got their mom and dad and called 9-1-1, the humane society.”
“He’s back pretty far about 20 feet or so we can just get a glimpse of what we believe is the snake,” Humane Society spokeswoman Kristie Biodrowski said.
The snake was coiled inside an ‘L’ shaped drain pipe.
“We don’t get a whole lot of strange loose snake calls we do impound them from time to time but usually we don’t have to worry about rescuing them from any kind of hole or what have you,” Biodrowski said.
Now the big problem…how to get the snake out?
“We’re working with a plumbing company to see if we can’t snake something down there to disturb him so that he’ll want to come out,” Biodrowski said.
Jose Belez of Roto Cop Plumbing offered to help clear his most unusual clog yet. He said he’s never had a clog quite like this one.
“Oh never not like that one not a five foot one that’s moving,” he said.
A metal snake couldn’t snake out the live snake.
So rescuers next tried tying rags to prod the snake out.
Again…failure.
Next they tried buckets of soapy water and even a trash can full but it didn’t create enough pressure to force out the snake.
By now the Sarah Armstrong of the Henry Doorly Zoo was involved.
“There’s enough room in that pipe that he was like wrapped around the towels on there,” she said. “You could see just coils of the body.”
Finally, a city water truck joined in…creating enough pressure to safely rescue the six foot long snake.
Originally thought to be a python, Armstrong identified the captured snake as a boa constrictor.
Neighbors were glad to see this unwanted guest leave the area.
“It was cool it took them a little while to get out but I don’t mind snakes I thought it was interesting,” Annie Abraham said.
“You never know what to expect but it is different from our day to day,” Biodrowski said.
It took about two hours to remove the snake from the pipe.
It was taken to the humane society and checked out.
Now comes the hard part…locating the snake’s owner.
If no one comes forward, we’re told the snake will be put up for adoption.