A Close Crawl Pet Snake Captured Near Cda Preschool

First, it was “as thick as a man’s arm.”

Then, workers decided, it was probably a boa constrictor.

While preschoolers ate lunch inside, workers combed brush for the snake the children spotted Wednesday morning in a nearby field.

“Ooh! There it is!” yelped one worker.

In the end, the snake that plopped out of an upturned culvert turned out to be pretty unimpressive. Barely two-inches thick and five feet long, the snake was believed to be someone’s lost pet. Workers didn’t know what type of snake it was.

Kootenai Humane Society officer Lynne Browne scooped up the snake with a stick. She plunked the reptile into a plastic bag.

Deb Danforth, director of the Little Folks preschool, was worried less about the snake than about the reporter who showed up. Distraught, she said she feared the preschool would be unfairly labeled as a haven for snakes.

“It’s not funny,” she said.

In fact, Danforth said, Wednesday’s snake was a first for the preschool. There was a bat once, and a bird hanging upside down, she said, but this was the first snake.

Children and a teacher spotted the snake in a field adjacent to the school’s playground shortly before noon.

“They were fascinated,” Danforth said. “Everyone immediately went inside and we read the zoo book on snakes.”

Minutes after the snake was captured, a Humane Society worker had the animal coiled around her arm. It seemed content and tame, occasionally flicking its tongue.

“He’s beautiful,” she said.

The day-care workers, deciding the beast wasn’t so bad, gathered around for a group photo. They headed inside to show it to the preschoolers.

Humane Society executive director Peter Nikiforuk said the snake posed little danger to anyone.

“They’ve got sharp teeth, but they’re not poisonous,” he said. It wasn’t a boa, he said, but wasn’t a native snake either.

The Humane Society will check its reports of lost snakes and try to find the owner, he said. If that’s impossible, he said, one of the society’s workers will likely take the animal in. It’s only the second time in two years the society has been called to capture a snake, he said.

“We’ll give it a good home,” he said.

, DataTimes