Buckingham cobra owner faces charges

Published: Updated:

FORT MYERS, Fla.- The owner of a cobra that escaped and was later found in the Buckingham area will face charges, according to Florida Fish and Wildlife officials.

“The first thing that we thought is, it’s not real,” said Jeremy Hargett, snake expert at the Calusa Nature Center.

Hargett says calls come in for snake sightings all the time, but they’re rarely correctly identified.

“Finally we got a call that said ‘no, it really was’ and everybody kind of shook their head and went uh-oh,” he said.

Hargett and FWC officials quickly began searching. They found the snake coiled underneath trash cans next to a home.

WINK News asked how easy it was to obtain a venomous snake permit.

“You have to have a escape-proof room, you have to be inspected by the FWC every six months so there is an inspector that will come out and make sure you’re in compliance,” said Hargett.

To obtain the permit you would also need to log 1,000 hours with a permit holder and have a disaster and bite plan.

The owner of the escaped cobra has more than 10 other venomous snakes and he tells only WINK News he is now going to get rid of them all. A map from FWC shows there are 29 venomous snake permit holders in Southwest Florida, 16 of them are in Lee County.

 

Copyright ©2024 Fort Myers Broadcasting. All rights reserved.

This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without prior written consent.