The sort of things that you expect to find in the grass are worms, grasshoppers, a lost earring, ants, a boa constrictor…

And that’s what the Policía Local in Málaga were called out to ‘remove;’ a boa constrictor 2.3 metres in length, which somebody appears to either have mislaid or decided that it was taking up too much room at home.

This incident took place on the 6th of February around 14:00h after a group of cyclists riding along the Camino Cortijo Campanillas found Mr Dangerous waiting for them along the way. Well, OK it wasn’t ‘waiting’ for them, or a bus for that matter, but it was ‘in their way.’

So, at the above time, they phoned the Policía Local to say that there was a sod-off snake on the lane and why not pop along and remove it?

Keen members of the municipal police turned up and after a quick look at a safe distance pronounced that it was groggy – tropical snakes and a European February don’t tend to mix very well for obvious reasons – and therefore it was far from wanting a policeman for lunch.

With the help of the owner of a pest-control company, the snake was picked up and placed into a cardboard box so that it didn’t get away. It probably hadn’t occurred to them that a boa constrictor crushes its prey, splintering its bones with its muscular body so that a cardboard box wasn’t exactly a sturdy prison…

Anyway, they managed to get it back to the station without any officers wearing it as a necklace to await the Guardia Civil, environmental-protection lads, Seprona, to turn up and spirit it away to the Centro de Protección Animal Municipal de Málaga (CEPAM). Experts at the centre said that it was a female and that this kind of snake normally lives in Central American jungles rather than in a cardboard box in Andalucia.

(News/Noticias: City & Metropolitan Area, Costa del Sol, Malaga, Andalucia)