Forty distressed pythons have been rescued by animal welfare officers from plastic storage bins in a Canadian motel room.
The snakes, ranging from one foot to 4.5 feet long, belonged to guests, a manager at the motel in Brantford, Ontario, said.
The couple, who had checked into a room for one night, were out when police seized the animals on Thursday evening.
Forty distressed pythons have been rescued by animal welfare officers from plastic storage bins in a Canadian motel room
Pythons are not legal for home ownership in Brantford, according to the city’s animal control by-laws.
Local police in Brantford, a city about 60 miles southwest of Toronto, said the reptiles were in distress but they were expected to recover, Reuters news agency reports.
The snakes have been taken to an animal shelter, run by the Brant County Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA).
The SPCA said the animals would be examined by a veterinarian, the Toronto Star newspaper reports. Welfare officers will continue to investigate the case.
Last week, two young boys in the eastern Canadian province of New Brunswick died after a 13 foot, 100 lb African rock python apparently attacked them in their sleep.
A post-mortem examination confirmed that the two boys died of asphyxiation.
A 10 ft (3 m) scrub python was battling to retain its grip on the wing as a Qantas plane made its way between the Australian town of Cairns and Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea.
It held on the whole 1hr 50 min flight.
But on arrival in Port Moresby, ground crew found the snake had died.
Passengers first became aware of the reptile 20 minutes after take-off. A woman pointed out the python to fellow passengers and cabin crew.
At first only its head was visible, but as it tried to manoeuvre itself back to safety, its whole body was exposed. Time and again it tried to pull itself back into the shelter of the wing, but the wind was relentless.
The wind speed was 250 mph (400 km/h) and the temperature -12C.
The snake’s body was hammered against the engine, leaving blood stains on the white paint.
A 10 ft scrub python was battling to retain its grip on the wing as a Qantas plane made its way between the Australian town of Cairns and Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea
One passenger, Robert Weber, a website designer in Cairns, told the Sydney Morning Herald: ”The people at the front were oblivious to what was going on but the passengers at the back were all totally focused on the snake and how it might have got on to the aircraft.
”There was no panic. At no time did anyone stop to consider that there might be others on board.”
The president of the Australian Licensed Aircraft Engineers Association, Paul Cousins, said: ”It appears as though the snake has initially crawled up inside the landing bay, maybe housed himself in there, and then crawled into the trailing ledge flap assembly.”
Scrub pythons are Australia’s longest snakes. They feed on rodents and often conceal themselves in enclosed space to ambush their prey. The wing of a stationary aircraft may have appeared a likely place to this particular snake.
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