HILO — A boa constrictor was picked up Sunday in Keaau by animal control officers.
HILO — A boa constrictor was picked up Sunday in Keaau by animal control officers.
“We did pick up one yesterday,” confirmed Adam Pereira, Hawaii Island Humane Society’s Keaau shelter manager, on Monday afternoon.
“Police called us,” he said. “They came across it.”
According to Pereira, who was not on the call, the snake was at a residence. He couldn’t say how big the reptile was.
It was handed over to the state departments of Agriculture and Land Natural Resources, he said.
Neither Donna Whitaker, executive director of HIHS, nor a spokesperson for the DOA could immediately be reached for comment Monday.
Boa constrictors are found in tropical North, Central and South America, as well as on some Caribbean islands. The reptiles can reach between 3 and 13 feet in length and up to 60 pounds.
In June, another live snake, identified at the time as a non-venomous ball python, was captured near the landfill in Hilo.
Snakes have no natural predators in Hawaii and pose a serious threat to the state’s environment, the DOA said at that time. Many species also prey on birds and their eggs, increasing the threat to endangered native birds. Large snakes also can be a danger to the public and small pets.
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I hope someone got a ticket..
Obviously the writer hasn’t read Rudyard Kipling. Rikki-Tikki-Tavi ferciously attacked cobras in India.
Mongoose are aplenty here. LOL
HVB isn’t choosy about visitors; thank goodness DAG does.
Just a reader’s sarcasm……
How does something like that get on the island, and who would be stupid enough to bring it? Off with their heads.
Nosila, the mongoose we have here is the small Asian or Javan mongoose, primarily an insect eater. The snake attacker of legend is the Indian grey mongoose, a larger animal with special adaptions to handing snakes, including a thick coat and resistance to snake venom. None of the local cinnamon rats are likely to take on a boa, much less a cobra.
There should be a mandatory sentence for anyone importing or maintaining a snake in these islands, and that sentence should be significant…say, minimum 15 years. Oh, crap…make it 30 years. If one of those animals gets established here, we’ll never get rid of it.