Elm Street resident Susan Plaisance had an eventful walk Tuesday evening when a man warned her of a snake in the road just ahead of where she stood with her dog.
She continued walking and witnessed the brown and yellow snake, about 10 feet long, slithering slowly across Elm Street in the direction of the Elk’s Lodge.
“I couldn’t believe it,” she said. “For a minute it stopped dead in the road. I think maybe it was sick because it was moving very slowly.”
With help, Plaisance’s daughter, Carly, moved the snake, presumed to be a boa constrictor, into a recycling bin. Then Plaisance, who is an advertising representative for the Banner and the Manchester Journal, called the police.
The passerby, Paul Restino, an intensive special needs specialist at Mount Anthony Union Middle School, circled back around to assist. Restino immediately called his son, telling Plaisance that the police would only call Animal Control to kill the snake and that a similar snake had been reported missing in nearby Putnam.
Upon arrival, police refused to exit their cars, according to Plaisance.
Restino then called his son who wrapped the snake into a blanket and drove away.
There was no word on if the missing snake from Putnam was in fact the snake found by Plaisance.
This local incident occurred only weeks after two young Canadian boys, Noah Barthe, 4, and his brother Connor, 6, were strangled to death by a 100-pound python that had escaped from an exotic pet store. Last Friday, nearly two dozen other exotic animals from the same Canadian pet store were seized or killed, including a Cuban crocodile, dwarf crocodiles, snakes and lizards.
