One day, toward the end of August, Beach Haven’s Ginnie Gottshall went out, as is her custom, on her front porch to read her daily newspaper. It would be a while before she learned the latest happenings in Iraq, Afghanistan and Southern Ocean County. Something, you see, reared its ugly (although some would say beautiful) head.

She noticed, just a few feet from her head, an object resting in between a porch window, the old-fashioned, crank-up-from-the-bottom type, and its screen.

“It was a dark, oval object,” said Gottshall. “It was about the size and shape of a standard football. I thought it was inorganic until it moved, raising a head.”

Gottshall called the police, telling them she had a big snake in her window. She said the police were very nice and took the matter seriously, but you can just imagine the cops saying, “Oh, boy, I think we’ve got a woman who had a little too many cold, sparkling libations on our hands.” Or, at the very least, they probably thought they’d be dealing with a garter or grass snake.

“When they arrived on my porch one officer said, ‘That really is a huge snake; we should call animal control.’”

But the other officer, thinking it might be a pet left behind by a vacationer, decided to check around the neighborhood.

“On a hunch,” said Gottshall, “he strolled next door and sure enough, he found the owner.”
The owner was Beach Haven lifeguard Dave Ollivier. The snake, meanwhile, was indeed a big ’un, a six-foot boa constrictor named Hayes.

“He’d been missing four or five days,” said Ollivier, who, on Labor Day evening, was returning home to attend school at Seneca High in Tabernacle. “There was just this little hole in his cage and I was in a rush so I said, ‘Dad, will you fix that for me?’”

His dad forgot. Hayes, obviously, made his escape.

“I figured he was hiding in the downstairs area,” said Dave.

Well, Hayes wasn’t. He proved himself the Houdini of constrictors and not only escaped the Fifth Street house but somehow managed (he probably stretched from a bush) to get wedged between Gottshall’s window and screen.

Actually Gottshall was lucky. She’s taking care of her daughter’s cat, a 7-year-old pumpkin-colored tom named Meadow. The cat spends a lot of its time on Gottshall’s porch. Hayes, having been on his own for around 100 hours, was probably getting hungry. A screen probably would have provided little resistance to a six-foot boa (remember, it seems like they’re all muscle and they can grow to weigh up to 60 pounds and have been known to eat animals as large as ocelots). A couple more days and Hayes may have had a rather big belly.

Well, Beach Haven’s small mammals can relax. Hayes, who Ollivier figures is 2 years old (he’s not sure because a friend gave the snake to him this summer), is heading west with his owner.
As for Gottshall, well, apologies were made and she holds no grudge. She even accompanied this reporter to interview Hayes on Labor Day afternoon (pulling a quote out of him proved as difficult as escaping from his grasp). An octogenarian, Gottshall didn’t fear the snake at all, even leaning in to get a close up of the snake and his owner.

But she did say one thing.

“What a summer, oh man, what a summer.”

— Rick Mellerup
rickmellerup@thesandpaper.net