I met evil today, in the form of a person's utter disregard for another life.

I was housesitting this weekend for a friend...

Today my extreme dislike of the freeloader alcoholic camped in her yard was crystallized into hate.

This guy buys snakes, and loses them. Buys another snake, then loses it.
Repeat ad nauseum.
He had a pair of young ball pythons that he stashed in my friend's house, and one (of course) got out because "someone" didn't latch the lid...
Does he look for it?

Nope.

So this morning as my hubby and I are packing up to leave, I glanced over and saw the ball python sticking out of the vent on the radiator-style heater. Found! But...

I looked closer, thinking he was just simply stuck... about 2 thirds of his body was through the vent, which I thought was odd, since their thickest part is a little less than midway down.

While the front third of his body was perfectly normal, the skin was all crackly starting at about his thickest point and got worse looking further down...there were huge scraped sections of skin missing, and where the skin was gone, the flesh was all dry...

I looked through the vent at his bottom half, because he seemed to just be hanging there, and his back third was totally stiff. We got the cover off without moving him, and I looked at it closely--

He was COOKED.

I touched his tail, and if I had used any force I could have snapped it off. I wanted to throw up.
He was still alive! He was alert, and looking at me! I had someone go get the guy out in his camper while my husband and I got wireclippers to cut the little python free...the guy walked in, looked at him, and said, "Oh, he's a goner." and walked out. Didn't try to help, didn't show concern that the little guy was still alive and had suffered horribly, nothing.

As we started to cut him free, I could see the full extent of his injuries, and that's when the horror of it struck me: the ball had climbed into the heater from below, and sometime during the night the heater had come on. As it got uncomfortably hot, he started looking to get away, and stuck his nose through one of the vents nearest him, and had proceeded to crawl through. He got stuck at his widest point, and as the pain got worse he forced himself through harder and harder, peeling off his own skin in the effort to get away. [I'm crying as I write this. I'm still horrified] As he worked, his back end started to cook. When he finally got the largest part of himself through, the back end was dead and stiff and he couldn't move it to get it through, so he just hung there for at about 8 hours, cooking slowly.

I can only barely imagine what it must have been like.
I carried him (still alive, remember!) out to the owner, who had gone back to sleep.
He yelled through the window for me to just stick it in a tank in the house, since it was gonna die in a day anyway!!!!!!!!!
I refused. I said flatly " I can't do that. It's got to be euthanised. I can't leave it like this. I'll take it and have it put down."
He opened the door and said again just stick it in the house. That's when I realised that this guy, who pays no rent and works just so he can go to the BAR every day, was not willing to spend the cash to end this animal's misery. So I said, "I'll pay for it, but it has to be euthanised."

His reaction?

"Okay." and he shut the door.

The "Humane" Society told me that since it wasn't mine, they would have to hold it for 8 days as a stray, and wouldn't put it down until the 8 days were up. I said "Pretend it's mine." Their answer was, "We would still have to hold it for 2 days, since you'd be 'surrendering' the animal."

Since it was Sunday night, most vet offices were closed, but I did finally find a vet who would put him down, for $65.

I will be doing the necropsy on him, and I will put those pictures up as well.

Pleae, if you have any comments on this, email me at cobalt