Massive Boa Rescued After He Slithers Down Storm Drain: Videos

NANUET, NY — Leaving Party City with balloons for her sister's birthday, Bridget Moschetti used the back exit onto Orchard Lane to avoid Sunday afternoon traffic — and encountered a much bigger delay.

There was a massive snake in the road.

"I couldn't believe it," she told Patch. "I got closer, and I called the Clarkstown police. At first they weren't really helpful. They said, 'It's wildlife,' and I said, 'No, it's 15-16 feet long and as big around as my thigh.'"

(In fact, according to one of the rescuers, it was about 7 feet long.)

When it began slowly slithering down into a storm drain, the Haverstraw resident started recording.

"I'm like 'Oh my god, this is somebody's pet,'" she said, "This is so sad."

She posted the video on the Clarkstown community Facebook page, hoping someone would claim the snake or help it. She reached out to everyone she could think of: the state's department of conservation, animal control, even the local pet store.

"I called PetSmart to see if a snake got out by accident, and they said 'we don't sell 15-foot snakes!'" Moschetti said.

Plus, she had to deal with less than helpful social-media comments. "I'm not afraid of snakes but just throw it in my boyfriend's car with my sister's balloons? Right."

Meanwhile, Elizabeth and John Tarrant were at a family barbecue, and her brother saw Moschetti's post.

John Tarrant was the owner of Outragehiss Pets, a Rockland County company that specialized in educational live animal presentations. (After 30 years, OPets didn't survive the coronavirus pandemic, more's the pity, but the point here is that he is an experienced snake-handler.)

So the Tarrants left the party and headed first to the storm drain to check out the situation, and then to Home Depot — where they bought $60 worth of snake-catching supplies, mainly consisting of several lengths of narrow PVC pipe and duct tape.

The boa was well in by the time they started to work, halfway between drain openings under the parking lot. "At the next section, it divided into three different pipes — if he had gone any further we couldn't have found him," Elizabeth Tarrant told Patch.

They taped sections of PVC pipe together, then found an old gallon milk jug in a nearby dumpster and attached that to the end. With that, they went to work slowly pushing the snake through the muddy drain toward them. "We were kind of leaning over sticking our heads and arms in," she said.

It took a while. "We didn't get him out till almost 8 p.m." she said.

And although he did act out, the snake didn't bite anyone, Elizabeth Tarrant said. She couldn't blame him, all curled up in the cool mud at nighttime and suddenly someone's poking him with a stick. "He was a little defensive," she said.

Yes, it is a guy, a very large male boa, obviously somebody's pet, probably abandoned when the owner became unable to cope.

"I can't imagine he 'just got out'," she said. "He was clearly very well taken care of — up until the point where he ended up in the storm drain."

Tarrant said the constrictor would not have survived a Hudson Valley winter. "He would have gotten a respiratory infection. It would have been a slow death for the poor guy."

Yes, of course the Suffern residents gave the snake a name.

"We're naming it after my mom," she said, laughing. "As we left my husband said to her 'if we get it out we're calling it Nancy'."

The snake went to a friend who has an exotic pet store in New Jersey and also finds homes for abused, neglected and abandoned reptiles. First he'll be examined and given some time to recuperate, then he'll be put up for adoption with people who know how to care for him properly, she said.

She knew her husband would not abandon that snake to its fate, she said — recently they were driving through Harriman State Park and came upon a timber rattler in the road. "He got out of the car and carried it to the shoulder," she said.

"This was like our kind of night," she said. "We loved every minute of it. It was a good outcome."