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Where's My Puppy?

POWELL, Ohio (AP) - The Humane Society of Delaware County found a small dog reported missing by a resident of this Columbus suburb - inside a 10-foot Burmese python.
Now police would like to find the owner of the snake.
Terry Doodan found the snake, with a telltale bulge in its middle, under the basement steps of her home while she was working on renovations.
The humane society X-rayed the python on Wednesday and confirmed it had swallowed the dog.
The snake apparently escaped from a Powell home but police haven't been able to identify the owner.
Misty Bay, humane society director, said the snake could grow to about 25 feet long. Burmese pythons are native to Southeast Asia.

(Copyright 2002 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
9-12-02

AND SOME INTERESTING PEOPLE >>>>>>>>>
Trooper bitten by snake bug

By Nomee Landis


Staff Sgt. Jarrett Majewski carries a snake hook in the right breast pocket of his BDUs most of the time ''because you never know when you'll meet a little copperhead."
photo
Staff photo by Steve Aldridge
Staff Sgt. Jarrett Majewski of Headquarters and Headquarters Company of the 82nd Signal Battalion of the 82nd Airborne Division, holds a Nike monitor. The lizard is one of Majewski's unusual pets.

Majewski carries the device, which resembles a retractable antenna topped with a coat hanger hook, not because he is afraid of snakes. On the contrary - he adores them, as he does all reptiles.

Majewski, to avoid confusion over his difficult-to-pronounce last name, is better known as Staff Sgt. ''Ski." He is a member of Headquarters and Headquarters Company of the 82nd Signal Battalion of the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg.

About 18 months ago, Majewski opened The Exotic Animal Shop in the flea market on McPherson Church Road.

He describes the business venture as ''a hobby that went too terribly out of control."

He recently sold the business to friends Alan and Connie Sedam. Majewski still helps out in the shop, handling the husbandry duties and much of the responsibility of educating the Sedams and the customers about the snakes and lizards and other critters they sell. ''I'm the encyclopedia," he said.

The purpose of the shop, he said, was never to make a mint but to share his knowledge and love of the animals with other people.

A glance inside Majewski's rented home off Waldo's Beach Road proves his fascination with unusual animals. The black lab puppy lying in the shade outside the door is the only ''normal" pet he owns.

A marsupial, too

Just inside the front door, a 5-foot-tall cage takes up much of the living room. From a makeshift bed-sheet hammock in one corner plays a coatimundi, a long-tailed relative of the raccoon that lives in central America and Mexico. The young animal pokes its long snout out and grasps Majewski's hands playfully.

Besides a couch, his living room decor is composed mainly of aquariums, homes to his prized animals, which he introduces by their formal, scientific names.

The Latin names roll off Majewski's tongue - Eliphe guttata guttata, Eliphe vulpina, Varanus niloticus, Python molurus bivittatus - as though he has been studying them for years. He has. They have common names, too: corn snake, Nile monitor, Colombian redtail boa, Burmese python, bearded lizard and so on.

''I've been doing this since I was 12," said Majewski, who grew up in Tampa, Fla. He is 33 now and has been in the Army since February 1989.

''I was never allowed to keep reptiles," Majewski said, adding that he still has to remove the snakes before his mother visits. ''I always had to sneak them into the house."

At 12, he took a job cleaning cages at a serpentarium near his home. He earned a quarter a cage. Later, he worked for a large importer of exotic animals. He was urged to learn the animals' scientific names. He didn't like it much at the time, but he is thankful he learned.

The knowledge came in handy while he was stationed in Germany several years ago. He got to know a curator at the zoo in Darmstadt and was given several animals to bring back to the United States with him.

Recently he has shared his understanding of snake husbandry with soldiers at the Army's Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape school. School instructors use the snakes to teach soldiers about the species they could encounter while on military operations in the United States and abroad.

Majewski said when he retires from the military, he would like to start his own serpentarium and continue to teach people about the animals.

He wants to help dispel myths about snakes and other reptiles, Majewski said.

Myths like these:

Every snake is a rattlesnake, a cottonmouth or a copperhead, or a venomous, dangerous snake;

You can find Eastern diamondback rattlesnakes that are 14 feet long;

A whip snake will grab its tail and roll down a hill to chase you;

All iguanas carry sal- monella.

The people who get bitten by snakes put themselves within striking distance of a snake through carelessness or ignorance, Majewski said.

''These small snakes we have in North America, there is no need to kill these animals, dangerous or not," he said.

Majewski said he sometimes holds ''snake school" to educate his three children about the animals.

The animals are a big part of his life. They're exciting, and that's the way he likes things.

''Between the animals, racing cars on Thursday nights and jumping out of airplanes, that pretty much keeps me fulfilled," he said.
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