A video shared by the St. Petersburg Police Department shows an officer wrangling a large snake at Dell Holmes Park.
The video, which was posted on Facebook, shows Officer Paul Grata using a tapping pole to grab the snake and place it in a garbage can with the help of a Parks and Rec employee. According to the post, a Florida Fish and Wildlife officer identified it as a ball python. "Snake in the Grass? No problem!" read the post.
The python is now headed to a snake rehab facility in Hillsborough County.
According to the FWC, ball pythons rarely grow longer than four feet. However, while SPD didn’t say exactly how big this snake is, it clearly looks closer to eight or nine feet.
Ball pythons are often confused with Burmese pythons, an invasive species that has harmed the Everglades ecosystem since the 1980s. Just last month, a record-breaking 18.9-inch Burmese python was captured in the Everglades..
The FWC’s Python Pickup Program, launched in 2017 is a program that encourages the humane killings of Burmese Pythons in the Everglades. The FWC announced July 28 that the program had successfully removed 5,000 of them from the area.
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