7 1/2-Foot-Long Boa Is First Surprise; Pot Patch Is No. 2

When Sendy Hartwell heard 2-year-old Krista calling, “Mommy! Monster! Monster in the living room,” she assumed the tot was just reacting to the “Ghostbusters” cartoon playing on the family’s television set.

But she checked anyway--and found a 7 1/2-foot, 20-pound boa constrictor coiled inside the playpen her 14-month-old son had been napping in just an hour before.

“I was trying to figure out what toy that was,” the Carson woman said Saturday, the day after the startling discovery. “Then its head popped up just like when you see those (snake charmers) on TV.”

Scooping up Krista and 14-month-old Danny Jr., she ran into the bathroom, locking the door behind her. She remembered to grab the phone on her way in; she dialed her husband at work.

The elder Danny Hartwell rushed home but said courage failed him when he tried to pick up the mottled black-and-gray reptile.

“I touched the snake and tried to pick it up, but when it kind of slithered toward me, I decided I wasn’t going to pick it up,” he said, deciding this was something best left to sheriff’s deputies.

Luckily for the Hartwells, it was Deputy Brian Schlosser who answered the call. Schlosser has always been fascinated by snakes and knew something about them. He had also just received a medal for meritorious conduct after rescuing two children from a burning building two months earlier.

When Schlosser arrived, he said he found the boa, which is non-venomous, “calm and curled up, watching TV.”

He seized the snake behind its head, put the reptile in a large cardboard box and kept it in the back seat of his patrol car until Los Angeles County animal care and control officers showed up.

Something Extra

Then the deputy got a little something extra for his trouble.

A neighbor told Schlosser that the serpent had been missing for almost three months and that its owners lived directly behind the Hartwells.

When Schlosser looked over the fence and into the back yard of Bonnie and Glenn Florio, he found 42 flourishing marijuana plants worth about $25,000.

“No wonder it was a mellow snake,” Schlosser quipped.

The Florios were arrested on suspicion of cultivation of marijuana and were released the same evening on $1,000 bail each. The snake, too, is back in its Ravenna Avenue home.

And the Hartwells, who believe the reptile made its entry through an open screen door, remain understandably uneasy.

Said Sendy Hartwell with a shudder: “It could have just wrapped itself around my son, and I wouldn’t have even known.”