Overland Park doesn’t have snake problem, police insist, after 2 are caught in August

Overland Park police on Tuesday insisted that the city does not have a snake problem.

That was after officers, for the second time this month, responded to a situation with a large snake slithering around a resident’s home.

On Tuesday, the Police Department tweeted a photo of an officer holding a 4-foot snake in the basement of a home, two weeks after a large boa constrictor had been found wrapped around the mailbox at another house.

The snake capture on Tuesday morning occurred at a home in the 9900 block of West 141st Street, where a resident had called for help.

No animal control officer was available, so police responded. An officer caught the snake, took it to a wooded area and released it. The family told the officer it was the second time they had found a snake in their basement.

The snake may have come through the floor drain or a sump pump hole, said Officer John Lacy, a Police Department spokesman.

The same day, police responded to another animal call around 12:45 a.m. after a woman found a bat hovering in her bedroom in the 1400 block of Park Hill Lane.

The woman’s husband called police, and a dispatcher reported hearing the woman screaming in the background, Lacy said.

“We had a wild night with wild animals,” he said. “It was a slow night, but we were dealing with animal calls all night long.”

However, Lacy insisted that Overland Park has not been overrun with reptiles.

“Again, we do NOT have a snake problem in OP, your kids are safe indoors,” Lacy wrote on Twitter.

Meanwhile, no owner has been located for the large, Colombian red tail boa constrictor found two weeks ago wrapped over the mailbox on the front porch of a home in the 10200 block of Broadmoor Street.

A mail carrier encountered the 7-foot-long animal, which was wrangled by three animal control officers.

No one was injured in any of the incidents.

This story was originally published August 28, 2018 at 10:33 AM.