The snake, around 6.5 feet in length, was discovered on Monday under a bed by the owner of the ninth floor apartment, located in the city of Kharkiv in the northeast of Ukraine, who then called the police, according to Ukrainian news service Channel 5.
The female apartment owner told the authorities that she does not know how the snake got into her residence, according to a statement by the Kharkiv Region Patrol Police that was posted on Facebook.
The authorities managed to catch the snake and put it in a bucket, in order to transport it out of the apartment building, and contacted a zoo located nearby in the city.
A veterinarian at the unnamed zoo examined the python and discovered that it was two years old. The snake was very hungry, but it started to feel better once it was fed.
Dmytro Haiduk, a spokesman for the Kharkiv Region Patrol Police, told Channel 5: “In the apartment on the ninth floor in the room under the bed, they found a snake, visually resembling a python.
“The patrol had to improvise, they have tactical and rubber gloves to catch and transport the animal. The reptile was taken to the vet. In other words, the snake is healthy, but a little exhausted, as it is unclear how long it has been outside its home.”
The snake is owned by a man in the city who called the zoo to inform them that he would like to take the python home. He does not know how it escaped from his terrarium, but thinks it may have left his home through a window in the residence.
The zoo’s administrator, Stanislav Kishinsky, told Channel 5 that they only fed the snake a small amount as “we don’t want to feed him much. He got some water and ate it. It is unknown how much he wandered around the apartments, but he is strong.”
Incidents of snakes being where they do not belong are reported often, and earlier in June, a snake catcher in Australia removed an enormous carpet python that had wrapped itself around the inside of a car engine, in a rescue he filmed and uploaded to the Snake Catcher Noosa Facebook page.
In a post on the social media platform, Luke Huntley said he was called about a 5-foot snake discovered in a car engine at a car park in Mount Cooroora in Queensland, Australia, after the vehicle’s owner looked under her hood when the oil warning light flashed.
The woman initially attempted to remove the snake herself, but called Huntley after she was not successful, who managed to safely get the python away from the car’s engine.
“I had to head grab to safely catch this one,” Huntley explained, in the post accompanying the two-minute clip. “With so many things for it to wrap around and very hot surfaces for it to get burned on it was the best option. Not to mention it diving into a very difficult spot to reach.”
Newsweek has contacted the Kharkiv Region Patrol Police for comment.
