Snake Complaints Jump 69% in NYC for the Year; Law Bans Vipers, Cobras
By: Hadassa Kalatizadeh
New York City is getting more complaints about pet snakes.
As reported by the NY Post, the 311 hotline experienced a whopping 69 percent jump in complaints this year against snakes and their owners. In 2022, there were 22 complaints logged, up from 13 in 2021. Seven of those grievances were logged in Manhattan and another seven in the Bronx, six more in Brooklyn and one each in Queens and Staten Island, as per the data. The 311 data doesn’t provide detailed specifics, so it could be that a neighbor was just calling out a tenant for keeping a cobra, or it could have been the case of an unleashed boa. City law bans owning any vipers, cobras, anacondas, and pythons, including ball pythons, which is one of the most popular pet snakes in the state. The city, however, does allow slithering pets including king snakes, corn snakes and milk snakes, as per the NYC website.
As per the Post, one episode in the Bronx, involved a viper that was said to have slithered into a residence on Park Avenue and East 172nd Street in Claremont, one noon in February. In March, one caller told 311 that a serpent was being housed in a dwelling on Clinton Street and Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn. The claim couldn’t be verified.
The last big snake case to make the papers in NYC was in May 2020, when residents recoiled when a crew of NYPD officers caught an eight-foot red tail boa constrictor that had wrapped itself around a light fixture outside a home in the Bronx.
“Snakes are the most misunderstood animal in the world,” said one snake fan, Ravi Ghulam, 30, an employee at Nature’s Reef & Reptile store in Jamaica, Queens. He owns four corn and king snakes at his South Richmond Hill home. They are “cost effective, typically eat like once a week and don’t require a big enclosure or tank,” he added, saying the reptile is inflation proof. “When you work with snakes, you see they are actually harmless,” he added. He said horror flicks like “Anaconda” (1997) and “Snakes on a Plane” (2006) gave the reptile a bad name. “It’s like ‘Jaws’ with sharks. Those movies scared the sh-t out of people!” Ghulam said.
Per the Post, other animals and pets also got rapped out on the 311 hotline. Overall, there were 440 complaints to the 311 number since Jan. 1griping about “illegal animals.” There were 216 calls about roosters. New Yorkers also made 87 calls to complain about farm animals. Also, there were 9 gripes about monkeys, 3 ferret protests, 2 turtle quibbles and another 101 calls about “other” unspecified critters. A majority of the pet peeve calls came from Queens—which logged 180 total animal complaints. Another 93 calls came from the Bronx, 78 from Brooklyn, 52 from Staten Island and 37 complaints were called in from Manhattan, as per the 311 data.
A city Health Department spokesman brushed it off with a humorous attempt. “New York City is always happy to welcome new neighbors into our communities, including many kinds of furry or feathered friends. That said, a rooster is a difficult neighbor and goats are usually happier chewing on something other than the wall-to-wall carpeting, and New Yorkers cannot keep these. For their sakes and ours, New Yorkers may keep only authorized pets in their lives.”
