ORANGE PARK, Fla. – After an 8-foot red-tailed boa was found slithering on an Orange Park street earlier this week, News4Jax on Tuesday unraveled the mystery of where it came from.
The Orange Park Police Department shared a photo of the snake on social media, looking for its owner, after a man found it stretched across Kingsley Avenue near Carnes Street Sunday afternoon.
The man snapped a couple of selfies and then called police, who took the reptile to Wild Things Exotic Animals in Middleburg.
"Usually, boas that big, we don’t see," Savannah Stevens, with Wild Things Exotic Animals, said Tuesday. "If somebody can identify it and prove that it is theirs, we would love to give it back to them."
So as the experts took care of the snake, I set off on a mission to find where the reptile came from.
It was a dead end until I came across Lexi Marie, the snake's owner.
He got out "probably Sunday," Marie said.
She said she owns 16 snakes, and this one weaseled out of his cage. Sure enough, when I compared pictures with Marie, it was a match.
"I am positive that it’s him," Marie said. "We were worried because we did not think he could get out. And we didn't want him to get a dog or something."
But don’t worry, she said, "He's not very scary. He's really nice."
Marie said she's relieved to be reunited with the boa.
"I am just glad he is safe because I was afraid that if he did get out that somebody, was going to shoot him or something," she said.
The snake will be headed back home, and the neighborhood mystery has been solved.