BIDDEFORD
A local woman received quite a surprise Saturday night when she came across a 3-foot python in a vacant house to which she was attending on Sky Oaks Drive.
The woman, who owned the house and had not rented it out for some time, discovered the trespassing reptile around 8:30 p.m. Saturday when she was making preparations for a relative who would be staying there, Deputy Police Chief JoAnne Fisk said Monday.
Police waited for the Maine Warden Service to retrieve the snake, which is now being held at the Maine State Police barracks in Alfred, Game Warden Carleton Richardson said.
Richardson said Monday the snake was identified as a ball python and is a former tenant’s pet. A friend of the tenant apparently lost the snake at the house but did not inform anyone.
The snake will be returned to its owner, Richardson said, because it is legal in Maine to own ball pythons as pets.
This isn’t the first time a python has been found in a Biddeford home.
In November 2015, a 11-foot albino Burmese python was seized from an apartment by game wardens. Unlike ball pythons, it is illegal to possess Burmese pythons in Maine.
Pythons continue to draw hype in southern Maine. In late June, witnesses in Westbrook reported seeing a 10- foot-long snake, presumably a python, in the Presumpscot River.
That snake, which set off a social media frenzy and has been nicknamed Wessie, was seen feeding on a beaver by patrolling police officers, who said it then swam away and hid in bushes near a park where children play.
Wessie has not been seen since June 29.
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