By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
A four-foot-long boa constrictor was found Tuesday afternoon inside a third-grade classroom at Riverside Elementary School, coincidentally in the same room where the teacher already keeps a pet boa constrictor., School and town officials were at a loss to explain how the male snake got inside the building or how long it was there, discovered around 2:15 p.m. Students were taken out of the ground-floor classroom while the snake was tended to. The reptile, which had no contact with children, is non-venomous, according to the website livescience.com., “In all my experience as an educator, I have never, ever encountered this particular situation,” Superintendent of Schools Stephen C. Cochrane said Tuesday. “Because the kids were used to having a snake in the classroom, they were very calm.”, He said the school custodian was able to get the snake, which was “curled up and docile,” in Cochrane’s words., The snake was kept overnight in the classroom of a science teacher, in a secure place, and was picked up Wednesday morning by animal control, the district said., One theory is that the snake was someone’s pet that escaped from a home, Cochrane said., “But we honestly have a lot of unanswered questions,” he said., “I think at this point, they’re still trying to find the rightful owner,” municipal Health Officer Jeffrey C. Grosser said Wednesday. “We’re trying to get to the bottom of actually whose snake it is, whether or not it belonged to another class or whether or not it belongs to a different owner in the neighborhood.”, The teacher, who sent parents a letter explaining what had happened, would use the incident as a learning opportunity for science, Cochrane said.
