Ssstop in the Name of the Law!

Police in Park Forest, a Chicago suburb, spent 30 minutes carefully removing a snake from the engine of a patrol car one Wednesday night.

Chief Chris Mannino and another officer stopped their car when they spotted the 3-foot-long (0.9 meter) snake in the road. But the slippery serpent didn’t surrender; it escaped under the car and into the engine area.

Mannino says he finally was able to grab the snake behind its head and safely remove it – after reading the critter its Miranda Rights. After police posted photos on Twitter, some alert readers recognized it as a non-poisonous snake that’s native to northern Illinois – and was likely someone’s “pet.”

The snake wasn’t in custody for long. Police released it in a nearby forest.

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The Usual Sssuspectsss

Authorities say a ball python slithered out of a toilet and bit a South Florida man on the arm.

Coral Springs police spokesman Chris Swinson said the man was treated at the scene after the 4-foot (1.2-meter) snake bit him when he lifted the toilet seat one Sunday morning. The snake is nonvenomous.

Swinson told news outlets the snake didn’t belong to the man and it was unclear how it got into the apartment.

The South Florida Sun Sentinel reports the Coral Springs Humane Society took the snake to a veterinarian’s office. It was being treated for a scale infection.

Over the years, other creatures have found their way into toilets in South Florida, including an iguana freed by Fort Lauderdale Fire Rescue, in March 2019. How it got there is still a mystery. 

How ANYTHING that big gets into a toilet is a mystery – one we will leave to the police and plumbers to solve.