Anaconda pet owner in slippery tale after 'recovered' snake found slithering in abandoned yard

A 1.8m missing pet anaconda was found in a neighbour's yard in Phoenix on Sunday despite its owner saying it had been found last week. 

Last Monday, owner Preesen Nair told TimesLIVE the snake had been found after it escaped from a temporary enclosure on January 27.

At the time, he refused to disclose whether the snake named Medusa was dead or alive.

On Monday he confirmed that the snake was found on Sunday and was in his possession.

His admission came after an outraged woman posted photographs on Facebook of the snake slithering in overgrown grass near her relative's yard on Sunday afternoon.

“Today [Sunday] it was seen and captured outside my sister-in-law's house where my nephews and niece play. This is unacceptable and ridiculous for people to feed the community with false information. We don’t care if it’s a pet or not. It can still harm innocent children playing outside or anyone for that matter,” she said.

The woman called for Facebook users to share her post.

Nair confirmed that the snake was found in his neighbour's yard.

“I went out there and captured it. I didn’t lie that it had been found last week. I was told by someone that it was found last week so I disclosed that information. I didn’t say I had found it.”

On January 28, hot on the heels of the movie Anaconda trending after it was aired on e.tv, Nair said his family pet, a yellow anaconda, had escaped while her enclosure was being maintained.

“When the enclosures are being maintained, the snakes are housed in locked plastic tubs. This is the practise throughout the world. She managed to escape. While the snake is big, we didn’t hear it slither away,” he said at the time.

Nair, who owns “more than a dozen snakes”, said the anaconda was  non-venomous, and he did not need a licence to keep it.

The news of an anaconda on the loose did not appear to invoke fear. Instead South Africans joked on social media that the snake escaped from the TV channel, was going to eat up all the residents in Durban and the film’s stars, Ice Cube and Jennifer Lopez, were on their way to save the country.

TimesLIVE