New Policy - please read:
 
    From now on we will not be posting or printing any inflammatory news stories about reptile attacks or irresponsible acts by reptile owners. They are nothing more than underhanded journalists attempting to cause panic to sell a paper. These stories are not newsworthy and this publication will not stoop to sensationalism to get people's attention. This does not however mean such things do not occur. They do on rare occasions happen and usually as a result of poor safety or husbandry. Please be responsible pet owners and help us prevent the panic such stories spread!
 

 
   THE PROVENCE (Vancouver, British Columbia) 18 July 04
 
   Prince Rupert relaxes after missing python found in roof (Stuart Hunter)
When the "bump" in the front porch soffit began moving and hissing, Dave Robichaud got out his chainsaw yesterday afternoon and didn't hesitate.
The Prince Rupert resident merrily cut three holes in his porch overhang in a successful attempt to free his missing pet -- a 4.8-metre-long, 57-kilogram, female, deadly reticular python named Spartacus.
"We just found her two minutes ago," a breathless Fran Bild said, after steadying the ladder as her common-law partner Robichaud chainsawed away. "She is back home in her bedroom now. She is fine -- we pulled her out and she didn't get mad or anything."
Locals were feeling nervous after the RCMP issued an alert for residents to watch their pets and small kids after Spartacus vanished Friday night.
RCMP Const. Jagdev Uppal said: "A snake that size is extremely powerful and it could be anywhere."
The call went out for volunteers to search for Spartacus yesterday but strangely there were few takers.
"I don't know anybody who wants to go looking for a [4.8-metre] reticular python," clerk Samantha Tapper of Leanne's Pet Shop said yesterday with a nervous laugh, adding the store sells about six snakes a year -- but no pythons.
Bild said Spartacus escaped by breaking through a window screen in her home in the 100-block 9th Avenue East after being put in her room to "air out" as she had just finished shedding her skin.
The couple frantically searched for Spartacus Friday night -- even looking in behind the broken piece of soffit where she was eventually found.
"We saw a bump and we started tapping and it started hissing and moving," Bild said. "We just took the chainsaw and now we've got three holes but we have our snake back."
The couple has had the snake -- which Bild described as "powerful but docile" and capable of slithering quickly, climbing trees and swimming -- for a few years, but this is the first time she has tasted freedom.
It's unclear why Spartacus escaped when she lives a life of leisure with her own room complete with a kid's splash pool. She even enjoys the occasional dip in the bathtub.
"She is just like one of the kids," said Bild, who also has three kids and three dogs.
She adding jokingly, "We'll take her into her room tonight and give her a talking-to.
 

 
   VANCOUVER SUN (British Columbia) 08 July 04
 
   Bullfrog invasion making waves in B.C. ponds: Government cutbacks means lack of cash to control slimy critters (Nicholas Read)
They are the plague that won't go away.
American bullfrogs that can weigh up to 750 grams and grow to the size of dinner plates are spreading through the ponds and streams of B.C., and now, because of government cutbacks, there's no money to control them.
Trudy Chatwin is an endangered species biologist with the B.C. Ministry of Water, Land and Air Protection in Nanaimo. She used to run a program that attempted to manage the proliferation of bullfrogs in the province.
Funding for that program is gone, but the frogs are still around and still spreading.
"In their place, they're fine," Chatwin says of the large, slimy green and brown frogs known for eating anything they can fit in their mouths. "But here they've just gone explosive."
Their place is almost all of the eastern U.S., but back in the 1930s, they were brought to southwestern B.C. by some misguided entrepreneur who wanted to raise them for their legs.
The trouble was that British Columbian palates didn't run to cuisses de grenouilles back then, so the frogs were abandoned to a local pond where they made themselves at home.
After that they remained almost invisible for 40 or 50 years. They were out there somewhere, but hardly anyone knew where.
Then, about 15 years ago, and for reasons no one can understand, they started to proliferate -- and proliferate and proliferate -- to the point that there are now who knows how many thousands of them throughout large portions of Vancouver Island and the southwestern part of the mainland.
"They're all over southern Vancouver Island as far north as Campbell River and as far east as Port Alberni," said Purnima Govindarajula, who is studying the frogs for her PhD thesis in biology at the University of Victoria. "They're also all through the Lower Mainland, in Abbotsford, Langley, Surrey and White Rock. They're also in Sechelt and there is one isolated population in the Okanagan."
The problem is that because they're an invasive species, bullfrogs are taking over habitats from native frog species. Not only that, they're eating native frogs, too.
"They're very opportunistic," says Chatwin. "They eat other frogs, including the red-legged frog, which is now a blue-listed [endangered] species because of it."
But it's not just frogs they consume. Their tastes also include other kinds of amphibians, ducklings, garter snakes, songbirds and even mice.
"They eat anything that can fit in their mouths, and they've got big mouths," Chatwin says.
In Langley, Lisa Burgess-Parker and other members of the Langley Environmental Partners Society (LEPS) have been trying to control their numbers for years. But now their funding has been cut as well.
So all they're left to offer is advice, which is that because bullfrogs like warm, deep water, make sure that any ponds on your property remain shallow and thick with vegetation. Otherwise, you're just extending an open invitation to an enterprising bullfrog to lay its eggs there.
And given that one adult female can lay up to 20,000 eggs at one go, that may be an invitation you'll come to regret, says Burgess-Parker.
Some native predator species, including herons, eagles, ospreys and snakes, will feed on young bullfrogs from time to time, but, because bullfrogs are foreign to B.C. and therefore not part of those predators' staple diet, not enough of them are eaten to keep their numbers in check. So those numbers just keep growing.
Humans can do their part too, says Burgess-Parker, by trying to fish bullfrog egg masses out of ponds before they're allowed to hatch. It's too late for that now -- bullfrog eggs are laid and hatched in May and June -- but next year, should you happen to find one in your pond, she suggests fishing it out and laying it on the ground where it will die.
And how do you go about recognizing such a mass? Chatwin describes them this way: "They're laid in broad, frothy sheets of jelly, and they look like poppy seeds scattered on a patch of slime. They may also be covered with algae."
Bob Espin, who has a hobby farm just east of the Langley airport, has lived uncomfortably with bullfrogs for years.
He's tried to get rid of them with help from LEPS, but they just keep coming back. Last fall he shot one with a .22-calibre rifle on a pond outside his house. But this spring, another one was there in its place.
He's been trying to get a sight on it since.
"I was out there this morning looking for the one that was croaking," Espin said Wednesday. "I know where he should be, but I can't see him clear enough to get a sight on him with a .22.
"They say I should try a fishing rod with a hook on the line and dangle it in front of him. I might try that. Then if I got him, I'd reel him in and whack him somehow.