This is crazy!
Farmer Finds 11-Foot Python Curled in Corn
October 26, 2005 10:10 PM EDT
GERMANTOWN, Iowa - This year's harvest will be memorable for Fred Schuknecht, not so much for his crop of corn, but what he found in it - an 11-foot python.
"It was coiled up in a roll between two rows of corn. I thought it was a tire laying in the field," he said Wednesday.
Schuknecht, 49, of Paullina, said he poked it with his combine and it didn't move. He got out to investigate, and realized it was a snake.
"I thought, 'Holy cripe!' It was big," he said. "I thought maybe it was dead, and then it started moving really slow."
He grabbed its tail to pull it out of the way.
"Then it started to unroll ... and it was huge," he said.
He and his father took the snake to town in a cardboard box and had it weighed at the grain elevator - 45 pounds. They measured it at 11.5 feet.
Schuknecht didn't know what kind of snake it was, but said "it was really pretty, with black and gold markings on it."
The Department of Natural Resources took the snake to a reptile nature center in Ames. Schuknecht said he since has learned that it belongs to a man near Germantown.
"He'd been missing it since the first part of July," Schuknecht said.
Farmer Finds 11-Foot Python Curled in Corn
October 26, 2005 10:10 PM EDT
GERMANTOWN, Iowa - This year's harvest will be memorable for Fred Schuknecht, not so much for his crop of corn, but what he found in it - an 11-foot python.
"It was coiled up in a roll between two rows of corn. I thought it was a tire laying in the field," he said Wednesday.
Schuknecht, 49, of Paullina, said he poked it with his combine and it didn't move. He got out to investigate, and realized it was a snake.
"I thought, 'Holy cripe!' It was big," he said. "I thought maybe it was dead, and then it started moving really slow."
He grabbed its tail to pull it out of the way.
"Then it started to unroll ... and it was huge," he said.
He and his father took the snake to town in a cardboard box and had it weighed at the grain elevator - 45 pounds. They measured it at 11.5 feet.
Schuknecht didn't know what kind of snake it was, but said "it was really pretty, with black and gold markings on it."
The Department of Natural Resources took the snake to a reptile nature center in Ames. Schuknecht said he since has learned that it belongs to a man near Germantown.
"He'd been missing it since the first part of July," Schuknecht said.
