A seven-year-old girl, Amelia Drewett, found the giant snakeskin in Oxford, UK, where she lives. She was out walking with her grandfather in a suburb when she found it. Her family tried to find the owner without success. She was told by the RSPCA that it probably belonged to a boa constrictor. The snakeskin is 5 feet long but part of it is missing so the snake is or was longer.
Nobody has come up with an explanation as to why Amelia founded in the brambles under a bridge. Is there a boa constrictor on the loose in Oxford? Her mother said that she was really worried and “had the image of a snake slithering around someone’s garden”.
Ben Tapley of the Zoological Society of London observed that the skin was flattened therefore there was a possibility that it had been discarded by its owner rather than shed by a living boa constrictor.
A shop nearby with experience in reptiles said that it is likely that the snake is being kept inside someone’s home if it’s still living. Nicole Head from Evolution Reptiles in Kidlington Said, “I can imagine somebody’s probably let [the skin] go, as a large snake is pretty hard to lose”. Apparently it isn’t the first time that they’ve seen this sort of thing happen.
If there is a genuine snake out there in Oxford it probably poses no danger to people but it will be worried and possibly feasting on rodents and small birds but in the current climate it is unlikely to survive until the end of the year. It would not eat your cat said Colin Stevenson, head of education at Crocodiles of the World zoo in Brize Norton, Oxfordshire.
In the UK, you do not need a licence to keep a boa constrictor because they aren’t venomous and therefore not considered to be a dangerous wild animal.
Comment: it’s almost certain that the person who owned this snakeskin just threw it away. How they acquired it is another matter. They may have bought it or they may have owned a boa constrictor or currently own one and it shed its skin.
