A woman from West Palm Beach (southeast Florida, USA) opened her washing machine and saw what looked like a garment with a python print, but when she touched it, she realized that it was a real snake and was “terrified”, reported media local.
“I was really terrified”Emily Wisnic told WPEC television channel as she recalled how the snake moved when she touched it with her hand.
Wisnic, who hails from Connecticut and has lived in Florida for less than a year, he screamed as loud as he could and, once recovered, she called the agency that handles wild animals that invade human spaces, something relatively common in Florida.
The Animal Control employees took the snake away, and Wisnic was left wondering how he would have managed to get to the apartment he rents in downtown West Palm Beach.
Florida suffers from an invasion of snakes Burmese pythons that are located in the Everglades nature reserve, a huge swamp located in the south of the state.
Last week the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) reported that the professional hunter program launched to eradicate Burmese pythons from the Everglades managed to capture 5,000 specimens in three years.
The environmental agency has been fighting for years against this non-native species and of which it is unknown how it reached the Everglades, where it has wiped out much of the local fauna due to its type of diet and its ability to reproduce.
These constrictor snakes can exceed 6 meters (19.6 feet) in length and 100 kilos (220 pounds) in weight and one of the theories that most experts shuffle is that they were introduced into the ecosystem as pets.
This seems to be the explanation of how the python got to the laundry room of Visnic’s apartment.
The woman told WPEC that the Animal Control people ruled out that the snake could have entered the washing machine through the pipes and were inclined to think that it was a neighbor’s pet and had crawled through the vents to the apartment of Visnic.
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