The Usual Suspects

Police tend to actually know quite a few of the trouble-makers in the communities they patrol. The same people get into quite a lot of trouble when left to their own devices. This is especially true in smaller communities, a bit more difficult in large urban areas, of course. So it really isn't a surprise that a sheriff's deputy in Richland Parish, Louisiana recognized a miscreant the moment he arrived on the scene of a crime. What makes it unusual is that the miscreant wasn't human.

RAYVILLE, La. - The chief deputy of Richland Parish didn't just capture the 8-foot snake that had stopped highway traffic. He recognized it. That let Chief Deputy Terry Thompson reunite the one-eyed boa constrictor with its owner, who had lost it when he moved to Rayville in March.

Thompson said that when he got to the spot where the snake had been spotted Friday morning, he was told that a driver had tried to run over the boa and shoot it.

A man and his wife stuck around to make sure the snake did, too.

One look told Thompson it wasn't poisonous. "I caught it by the tail, pulled it out, and picked it up and put it into a pillowcase," he said.

Then he looked it in the face and realized they'd been introduced.

Last year, Thompson said, Chad Foote brought the snake into investigators' office to show it off. Foote had recently bought it at a good price because of the missing eye.

Our informants tell us that the snake, named Sammy, was kicked out of the Animal Uprising™ because of a serious gambling problem. In fact, Sammy lost the eye in a fight over a game of craps. The pot included a pair of Gucci high-heel ankle-strap sandals and Sammy accused the other players of cheating when he didn't win. (We've written about the weird fascination that snakes have with shoes before.) Sammy is now safely back behind bars.