LITTLE ROCK, Ark. -- A curious pickup truck driver spotted a box in the grass marked "Live venomous reptile" east of downtown and stopped to take a look.
"When you see something like that, you want to look and see what it is," Paul Mitchell of Little Rock said of his Friday afternoon discovery. "I went over and kicked the box."
The electrician looked inside and found a cloth bag slithering into the form of a cobra ready to strike.
"I was like, 'Hot dog! That thing is big!'" Mitchell said.
Mitchell grabbed up the box, put it in the bed of his truck and took it to the Little Rock Zoo.
"I was just going to take it back to work and kill it, but I figure cobras aren't indigenous to Arkansas," Mitchell said. "I knew the zoo would have a snake handler."
Randal Berry, the zoo's reptile keeper, took the snakes in out of concern for public safety. He said the zoo doesn't usually take in animals.
Berry said the cobra was very aggressive as he pulled it from the sack, repeatedly rearing its hooded head. Also inside the box were a 14-inch-long twig snake; an East African bright green mamba that measured 6 feet long, and a 4-foot black mamba. All are highly venomous and there is no antivenin in Arkansas.
Berry said the snakes were in good condition and estimated that, together, they were worth about $1,000.
No one knows where the snakes came from. The box had no markings other than "Live venomous snakes." Berry said no snakes were missing from the zoo.
Cindy Dawson, assistant city attorney and zoo docent, guessed that the snakes came into the city illegally. Keeping, selling, possessing or maintaining venomous reptiles is illegal, though some exceptions are made for education, research and entertainment.
City officials said they're hopeful all the snakes are accounted for, but that they would remind any animal control workers that calls reporting any exotic snakes could be serious and not pranks.
Zoo officials said they haven't decided what they're going to do with the snakes, including the seething cobra.
"I don't want it here," Berry said with a laugh. "He's not a nice guy."
