A shocking discovery Thursday at the Goodwill Industries of Fort Worth sorting center now officially tops the list of bizarre donations they have been forced to handle: an albino boa constrictor snake.
“I was tipping this machine, and when I brought the bin back the snake was hanging over the edge,” said Tassy Rodgers, who works in donation processing. “I was a little freaked out and thinking this cannot be fake; it’s gotta be real.”
The snake was very much real, and is now in the care of the Goodwill staff until its rightful owner can be located.
The belief is that it did not slither its way into the southeast Fort Worth sorting center and was instead dropped off — either on purpose or by accident — at one of the 38 donation centers in the Fort Worth area.
“I just don’t know what the context is of how this snake got to us,” said Goodwill assistant manager James Murphy. “There are multiple steps this snake had to take to get here.”
“I don’t know if someone may have [dropped it off] maliciously,” Murphy said. “Maybe they wanted to get rid of it and weren’t quite sure how, or maybe it just wanted to get warm. It was in a pile of clothing.”
Thankfully for the snake — and for the other employees — Murphy has previous experience owning and handling snakes and other exotic animals, so he was prepared to help as opposed to panic when he got an urgent knock on his office door Thursday.
“They’re very strong and they are constrictors. So if he didn’t want to let go of that bin, it would have been hard to get him off without hurting him,” Murphy said. “So, we tried to coax him to start slithering, to relax his muscles and that’s when I started holding him. Eventually he relaxed enough for me to get him in that bin.”
A snake expert told NBC 5 that boa constrictors are not venomous and are generally fairly calm though they could bite when threatened.
U.S. & World
Editor's Note: The snake in this story was previously identified as a python. NBC 5 has since learned it is a boa. We regret the error.
