BLOOMFIELD —
A 6-foot snake is taking it easy and rehydrating six weeks after his cage was accidentally left open and he was let loose in a Davis County High School classroom.
The red-tail boa python went missing from former Davis County High School science teacher Joe Pisarik’s classroom in May.
Bloomfield Police Assistant Chief Jason Cole said the snake was found by janitors Wednesday morning in a tub on top of a tall counter in the science room it escaped from — and never left.
“It had to have been in the building the whole time,” Cole said.
John and Jane Pisarik, of Floris, Joe’s parents, came to pick up the snake Wednesday, since Joe was visiting his brother in Nebraska.
Pisarik will subsequently move to Washington state to start his new teaching job.
“They called our son, then our son called us, then we went up and got the snake,” Jane said. “Parents, their work is never done.”
Joe was going to give away the snake to one of his students, and was traveling with the student to the high school to pick it up when they saw it was missing from its cage.
“A girl was having detention, and they have kids do stuff while they’re in detention, so she was cleaning out the cage and that’s why she left the cage open,” Jane said. “That was the day before he was going to give the snake away.”
Janitorial staff searched the entire school but were unable to find the snake.
And on the night of May 27, police and firefighters searched the area surrounding the school and a pond nearby where a drain from the school property emptied out.
“[Joe] was pretty upset about it,” Jane said. “He’s very cautious with his animals. And he’s not a dangerous snake. No one was going to get hurt by the snake.”
In fact, Joe had looked in all of the bins in the classroom when they first searched for the snake, but the snake wasn’t in the bins at the time.
“But he ended up in that bin and he’s been there for the past six weeks,” Jane said.
Jane was amazed that the snake was alive after six weeks without food and water, but Joe said the snake could have actually gone six months without food — it’s the water he wouldn’t have been able to live without.
“He was a little dehydrated but the janitor gave him water up there, then we gave him more water,” Jane said. “He’s resting now.”
Jane said Joe will most likely take the snake with him to his Washington classroom.
“He felt very cold,” Jane said. “He’s very skinny. He’s moving, he’s just moving kind of slow. I’ll be happy [today] when Joe gets back. He’ll take the snake and feed it.”
CNHI/Southeast Iowa
Case of the missing python solved!
Missing python found in Davis County High School classroom
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