Sticky Situation

“What happened to having dogs and cats?”

James Stroope, Sheriff’s investigator

Photo by QuantumButterfly

Call off the all-points bulletin—the slippery stowaway has been caught. And that has everyone in Brownwood, Texas (population 18,837) breathing a little easier, with good reason. After all, the stowaway was a two-foot-long, highly venomous cobra snake.

The snake’s adventure began when its owner was arrested on drug charges in January. After initially lying to authorities, the man admitted there a was a cobra loose in his house. Investigators who had been searching the house for drugs were not pleased. They called off their search and called in the snake experts.

The experts searched the house high and low. No luck. They sprinkled flour on the floor to track the snake. Still no luck. Finally, they put out glue boards and their efforts were rewarded. After a month-long search, the experts snagged their snake. And how did they remove the poisonous and perturbed cobra from the glue board? Very carefully . . . and with lots of vegetable oil.

This story has a happy ending. No one was hurt, and the snake will not be sharing the fate of it owner—time behind bars. Instead, it’s been adopted by a wildlife group, which says the snake will live out its days as “ambassador for responsible pet ownership.”

Read more:

■  Brennan K. Peel, Ssssssstill missing: Cobra on the loose in Brownwood, ReporterNews.com, January 20, 2012.

■  Steve Nash, Sunset monocle cobra leaves Brownwood for new home in Abilene, Brownwood Bulletin, February 16, 2012.