Dog walking? A ball python could be your slithery surprise

A female ball python was found in a pile of rubbish in rural Ancaster - and it's not the first snake collected by Hamilton's animal services in 2022.

For Wanda Bailey it was just another walk with her dogs last Thursday, but when she stopped to look at some rubbish on the other side of the road she discovered something unexpected, a curled up snake in the ditch.

I thought it was dead. My dogs and I stood there looking at it for a couple minutes and it didn't move," said Bailey. We continued on with our walk and went home. We had our young neighbour visiting that day and I took her to look at the snake. When we got there the snake had moved."

Bailey later came back with a neighbour and realized the three-foot long snake with brown patterns had moved. We went home and called animal control. We emailed them a photo of the snake and arranged to meet with them when they arrived."

Animal control rescued the animal and identified it as a female ball python.

We were grateful that she would be cared for," said Bailey. We have over the years found many abandoned animals in our neighbourhood. One dog was adopted by a friend."

According a list by Hamilton animal control, it was the third snake they collected this year. A total of 994 animals have been found up to July 31 - the cast majority being cats (410) and dogs (464). But felines and canines aren't the only abandoned pets: 37 rabbits, 32 birds, 11 rats, nine guinea pigs and eight ducks.

It offends me that people dump their unwanted pets on a country road. What do think will happen to them? Somebody will come along and save them? Or they will learn to live in the wild?" said Bailey.

The city's animal services has a website listing of animals up for adoption at HamiltonAnimalServices.Petfinder.com.

Beatriz Baleeiro is a reporter at The Hamilton Spectator bbaleeiro@torstar.ca