Face to Face With Python : 3rd Sighting Was an Unlucky Charm

Someone reported seeing him alone in a car parked just off Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood on Monday.

When Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies got there, he was gone.

On Tuesday, he was spotted again, this time on a street near Crescent Heights Boulevard. A search of the neighborhood turned up nothing.

Late Tuesday evening, however, a woman driving into the underground parking garage of an apartment complex in the 1200 block of North Crescent Heights spotted him against a wall. She was reported to be upset. It was probably the first time she had ever been nose to nose with a nine-foot Indian python.

Diversion With Flashlight

Sheriff’s Deputies Stan Garrett and Kerwin Wong arrived. Garrett said he diverted the snake’s attention with his flashlight beam, then managed to grab it behind the head and throw it into a metal container.

The python made a half-hearted attempt to put the squeeze on him, Garrett said, but “never did give me too much trouble. . . . It’s just a good ol’ boy and very pro-police.”

Unable to find its owner, deputies turned the errant, non-venomous python over to the county Department of Animal Care and Control, which lodged him at the county animal shelter in Carson, where district supervisor Leslie Mitchell said he was “doing fine.”

The owner still had not shown late Wednesday.