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Anybody lost a snake — Brooklynian

Anybody lost a snake

homeowner
homeowner
edited November -1 in Crown Heights/Prospect Lefferts Gardens
So I go outside this morning and I'm walking past my neighbor's house and I see a snake that has been killed, cut up, and left in the treewell in front of his house.

All the boys were with me and needless to say, the rest of the day was filled with speculation about what happened and why. Currently the theory is that it was a poisonous snake that bit its owner and was therefore killed. The other popular theory is that it was some sort of voodoo ritual and was left as a message to my neighbor (Snakes end up as shakes?) or one of his tenants.

I came home and took a picture to try and identify what type of snake it was but the best I can figure it’s probably a Kingsnake which is non-poisonous, a Bandy Bandy which is only mildly poisonous or a Stephens Banded Snake which is extremely poisonous. I'm leaning towards the first because the other two are not indigenous to the US, but if anyone here knows anything about snakes perhaps you can help identify? Warning: the images are a little gory


image

image

Comments

  • armchair_warrior
    armchair_warrior
    could be one of those animal sacrifices that goes around in the hood. for religious reasons.
  • dakotas way
    dakotas way
    That is absolutely terrible. I can't stand snakes, but would never hurt them. That amounts to animal cruelty and should be reported just as if it had been a dog or a cat.
  • leeho
    leeho
    I have seen lots of weird shit in the neighborhood, but that is by far the weirdest. Where was that located?
  • shishkab
    shishkab
    i looks like a kingsnake to me. it wouldn't be the Bandy Bandy -- they have a very specialized diet, and keeping that creature just wouldn't make sense. of course, an image of the head would help

    (sorry, folks. i honestly don't mean to be morbid; it's just that identifying the snake would be more easily done with images of the head)
  • brooksignal
    brooksignal
    Lampropeltis Getula, Common Kingsnake

    image

    Most likely what it is, I mean was. That's some freaky stuff. The West Indian culture has some strange practices.

    I see what you mean about the other species mentioned, they are very similar in appearance.

    They are also very exotic, which probably makes them expensive, and why discard the body in the tree pit, wierd.
  • homeowner
    homeowner
    I couldn't easily identify the head and I wasn't going to poke around the remains but it didn't look like the head was there.

    As to where this was, it was on Park Place, closer to Nostrand.

    Yeah, this was probably the weirdest I've seen as well, since one of my classmates in junior high reported that someone had left a dead chicken on her doorstep.

    Called 311 to try and get to animal control. Was told that they really couldn't do anything unless I was reporting a case of animal cruelty. For animals that are already dead, they simply had instructions on how to dispose of the body.
  • ninj4
    ninj4
    i live on park pl near nostrand and know what happened. some young neighbors were coming outside from the basement and the snake was on their steps, scaring the poop out of them. assuming it was poisonous, they immediately killed it with a shovel. why they cut it into little bits or tossed it in public rather than a trash can is probably due to ignorance, panic, and groupthink.
    the proper way to handle this is to not panic and call animal control. they'll take it from there.
  • homeowner
    homeowner
    Thanks for the info. Nice to know that it was not something more nefarious. Sad to think it was probably somebody's pet that got killed. Passed by again a little while ago and it appears that the neigborhood scavengers have gotten to it. Looks like the stray cats are having snake tartar for the next couple of days.

    Ninj4, if you happen to see the kids that did it you may want to mention to them that they should call animal control the next time.
  • shishkab
    shishkab
    tastes like chicken.

    ignorant sumbitches killed a perfectly harmless animal.
  • brooksignal
    brooksignal
    Now that is FUNNY!
  • anonymous
    anonymous
    Ninj4, if you happen to see the kids that did it you may want to mention to them that they should call animal control the next time.
    Yeah they could have called animal control and wait hours or days for them to show up. Get a life. I would have killed the little shit too.
  • sweet tea
    sweet tea
    Anonymous wrote:
    Ninj4, if you happen to see the kids that did it you may want to mention to them that they should call animal control the next time.
    Yeah they could have called animal control and wait hours or days for them to show up. Get a life. I would have killed the little shit too.
    whoa. listen, i'm terrified of snakes. nightmares, the works. but king snakes are NOT POISONOUS. nor, by all accounts, are they aggressive.
    they do eat rats, which wouldn't be such a bad thing.

    so there's no need to be calling the snake a little shit, nor to advocate killing it.
  • MOD
    MOD
    Like usual, a guest decides to add his educationally disabled opinion to the mix. Great.

    And my 2 cents:Who the hell is this "scared young couple" that even though they are supposedly petrified by this snake on their porch they can rouse up the spirit to catch it (snakes tend to avoid humans and would slither away if given the chance) and then slice the shit out of it and toss it in a tree hole (without the head).

    Sorry but that whole story sounds dubious and weird.

    Why didn't they I put it in the trash, why did they fricassee the thing, and why did they openly toss it into a public place?
  • homeowner
    homeowner
    Mamacita, I think that Ninj4 was saying that it was a couple of young neighbors (i.e kids). Knowing the kids on this block I could see it happening. Many of them don't get off the block a lot, probably don't have a lot of exposure to reptiles as pets, and being afraid of a snake at nine, ten, eleven or twelve killing it would probably be the instinctive choice (that's how vermin are dealt with) instead of catching it or trapping it. And frankly there's a lot of adults that I know that wouldn't chose to catch it or call someone either.

    As for the not putting it in the trash, the treewells are the trash as far as folks are concerned. The block association has been working on that one, but there hasn't been a lot of progress. I blame that mindset on the corner boys who will drop their empties at the base of a tree rather than walking the three feet to a garbage can.

    The fricassee thing? I still don't get it.
  • MOD
    MOD
    ninj4 said
    young neighbors were coming outside from the basement
    not kids, I assumed these were young adults (18 +) but I could very well be wrong.

    Still, my point is that you can kill something without grossly destroying it if you feel you are in danger. That's all. The snake was cut to pieces. Seems extreme. I see your point about the tree now, but it's still messed up. If they were kids then it reminds me too much of the dumb kids I used to know that tortured cats and anything else they didn't know or like when I was a kid in east los. It's not right either way.
  • ninj4
    ninj4
    they were 18+ and as for utterly destroying the animal and depositing it in a tree I vote excitable fear coupled with mob mentality. this mixture has produced worse than dead snakes.
  • dakotas way
    dakotas way
    The poor snake. It looked like something out of "Beetlejuice"
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