The officer, responding to a complaint at the apartment on July 28, learned the man had found a timber rattlesnake at another property and brought it back home in the bucket, according to DEC. The man admitted to capturing the snake and keeping the other’s head and gave both to the officer.
The incident follows one involving a much bigger snake on July 12, when a DEC officer ticketed a man displaying a Burmese python on a Coney Island boardwalk, according to DEC. Burmese pythons — native to southern and southeast Asia and now an invasive species in Florida — are illegal to own in New York, and the snake was brought to the Nassau County Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
In the Catskills, the man was issued tickets to appear in Wawarsing Town Court for taking or possessing a threatened species. As for the rattlesnake, DEC released it back into the wild. A video shows it weaving through the wet grass on a rainy night.