Nearly 50 pythons euthanized in B.C. home eviction

British Columbia is the latest province with a snake problem as officers discovered and euthanized nearly 50 illegal pythons in a home in the Fraser Valley.

Insp. Chris Doyle of the B.C. Conservation Officer Service said they were called to a house in Mission, B.C., on Thursday while the tenant who owned the snakes was being evicted.

Officers discovered 46 reticulated pythons which are prohibited under the province's Wildlife Act without a permitthe longest snake was just over four metres in length.

'Those snakes are a public safety risk.' Insp. Chris Doyle, B.C. Conservation Officer Service

Doyle said nobody had a permit for the snakes at the house, which is located in a residential area and is just a fewblocks away froma school.

Conservation Officer Dave Cox told CBC News that anadditional 50 snakes discovered in the home were legal.

The report came in the same day that40 pythons were seizedat a Brantford, Ont., motel room.

Earlier this month,two young brothers were killedwhile sleeping at a friend's house in Campbellton, N.B., by an illegal African rock python that had escaped from its enclosure.

"Those snakes are a public safety risk," Doyle said about the reticulated pythons found in Mission.

Doyle said officers found a number of other snakes and a monitor lizard that didn't fall under the province's controlled alien species regulation, as well as some restricted species like boas and other kinds of pythons.

Restricted species only become prohibited once they grow beyond a certain length.

"Some species of pythons aren't ever restricted or prohibited because they don't grow large," Doyle said.

Monitors are among the biggest lizards on the planet and some species are prohibited, though Doyle said the kind they discovered wasn't illegal.

Doyle said that although no venomous snakes were discovered, "you do have to be concerned of being bitten by any snake for risk of infection plus the injury itself."