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Friday, 26 October 2007 |
Python in the Toilet
This sounds like a made-up story just in time for Halloween. But everyone's nightmare really happened to a New York City woman and she's still struggling to get over it. Nadege Brunacci was in the bathroom of her apartment at the crack of dawn, and fortunately for her she was only washing her hands. But she felt like someone was looking at her, so she glanced around the tiny room. What she saw staring back at her nearly gave the 38-year-old a heart attack. Peeking out of her toilet were the beady eyes of a 7-foot long python.
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 At first she wasn't sure just what that thing in her bowl was. "I thought my daughter dropped her sweater in it, to tell you the truth. She is five years old and the shadow was so big, I was like - it's not possible," she recalls. And then she turned on the light and began screaming. The full length of the serpent was still coiled in the pipes, but one glimpse was enough to convince Brunacci to get out of there, pronto. She slammed down the lid, put a heavy box over it and called her landlord and the local fire department.
Plumbers had to tear apart the downstairs neighbor's pipes to capture the serpent, which had retreated so that only its head poked through Brunacci's toilet. "I was anxious about it getting flushed and never coming out," said Valerie Ross, 41, from whose apartment the snake was extricated. "I'm happy it's out. Now I'm just unhappy about the holes in my pipes."
Nobody knows where the snake came from, or how it made its way up three stories of piping, but a first-floor tenant in the four-story Tiffany Place walkup reported seeing the creature slithering down the basement steps eight days earlier.
Brunacci gave the snake to a friend who offered it a loving home and named it Nadege. City Health Department regulations prohibit keeping a python as a pet. The creature may be gone from her flat, but the shattering of an urban legend has forced Brunacci to keep her eyes peeled every time she uses the bathroom.
Alligators, monkeys, goats and even a 420-pound tiger have all been confiscated in recent years. But New Yorkers have never done things by halves, and when it comes to their pets, they make no exception.
"To have a dog, cat or your basic fish or canary is nice, but some people want something different," said Mike Pastore, director of field operations at Animal Care & Control. "It's a way of grabbing attention." Under New York City Health Department rules, it is illegal to keep anything other than a domestic dog or cat, a small bird or reptile, or a pocket pet like a hamster, in a home.
But whether it's a desire to be closer to nature, or a taste for the exotic, many people go out of their way for a predator they can call their own.
"They're my animals," said Ruga Roach, 16, who has a large turtle, two baby pythons, two tarantulas and a Labrador retriever in his family home in Corona, Queens. "If the city tried to take them away, I'd fight to keep my animals. I'd go to court." Ruga is not alone, nor are his pets the most bizarre examples animal workers have dealt with.
In 2003, cops were called to Antoine Yates' fifth-floor apartment in Harlem to tackle Ming and Al - a 10-foot-long Bengal-Siberian tiger and 5-1/2-foot-long alligator. Each had its own bedroom, and despite neighbors' complaints about streams of urine seeping through their ceilings from the apartment above, it was only when Yates sought treatment for a tiger bite that authorities realized something was amiss.
"It was a closed secret. They only knew about ...[the tiger] on that floor," said Terrance Avery, 25, who saw Yates buy vast amounts of chicken at the supermarket to feed Ming. "I just thought he liked chicken. You've got to watch your neighbors." Yates served 3-1/2 months in jail after pleading guilty to reckless endangerment, but most owners of illegal pets are hit with a $500 fine and their animals are confiscated, according to Animal Care & Control.
Animal workers say many owners are well-intentioned and spend considerable sums looking after their creatures. Others fail to realize how big the pet will grow - or simply get bored when the novelty wears off. "It may seem cool or it may seem different, but it's illegal and it's unfair to the animal," said ASPCA spokesman Joe Pentangelo, who said staffers took two emaciated goats and a chicken from a Staten Island home last spring after receiving an anonymous tip.
In May, firefighters stumbled across two alligators, two cobras, a python and black widow spiders while battling a blaze in Corona, Queens. And when one family was evicted from their Bronx home this year, the landlord had to call Animal Care & Control because of the 2-1/2-foot long alligator left in a tank on a dresser in a child's bedroom.
"It's ridiculous," said neighbor Steven Garcia, 37. "I can see hamsters and gerbils, but as for something that can catch you while you're sleeping, you shouldn't have it."
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