The hunt is on for two of three pythons that were seen slithering through Forest Park in Queens.
On Thursday, parkgoers were in for quite a surprise when they came across one of the pythons sitting in the roadway near Myrtle Avenue and Woodhaven Boulevard.
Catherine Laboy was on her way home from Puppy Kitty NYCity, the animal shelter where she works, when she saw a group of people trying to move something out of the road with a large tree branch. She didn’t know what the group was trying to move, but she figured it was animal of some kind. So, she decided to stop and help out.
“At first I was in like panic mode,” Laboy said. “I took out a shopping bag and we put the snake in there.”
The python, which was named Kevin by its rescuers, didn’t want to stay wrangled. Laboy said it was trying its best to work its way out of the shopping bag so, she went to her car and grabbed a box she had inside.
“I ripped it open and we managed to put the snake in there and secured it like that,” she explained.
Kevin the python did not like being in a shopping bag, so an animal shelter worker got a box from her car and moved the reptile into that instead.
Two other ball pythons that were seen in area managed to get away, slithering back into the park. That raised the eyebrows of many people who were in the park on Friday working on the track and walking the trails. That includes Brian Rodriguez who said he was enjoying a walk in the park, not expecting to hear about pythons being on the loose.
“It makes me think something’s going on,” he said. “It’s crazy to think about pythons in New York City.”
It wasn’t a crazy thought for Patti Alvino, who told NBC New York she thought she encountered one of the snakes just a couple of days prior while she out on a walk in the park.
“I happen to look down and I saw this black and yellow thing rotating, moving, slithering,” Alvino said. “So I said ‘What the heck is that?’ I said ‘That’s a snake’ and it was huge. So I kind of leaped over it and took off.”
Experts said it’s likely that someone dumped the pythons in the park. They are illegal to have as pets in New York City and could be a danger to small animals.
We reached out to the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, which said if New Yorkers see an abandoned animal they should leave it where it is and call 311 or find an urban park ranger in the park.
“Parks are not suitable homes for animals not indigenous to those parks-domesticated or otherwise. In addition to the potential danger to park goers this could have caused, releasing non-indigenous animals or unwanted pets can lead to the elimination of native species and cause additional ecological stress,” the Parks Department added in a statement.
Laboy said she and others notified the NYPD which helped search for the two pythons that remained on the loose.
As for the one that was captured, Laboy and her boss took it to Animal Care Centers of New York City so it could find a proper home out of state. Her main concern now is finding the remaining pythons and getting them to a more suitable environment.
“They are conducting a search, but it’s no guarantee they’re going to find them,” Laboy said. “Hopefully, somebody does bump into [one] and makes a call.”
