Editorial: Releasing pythons slithers around responsibility

It should go without saying that, if you have a pet, you keep your pet. Keep it fed. Keep it healthy. Keep it under control, whether in the yard, in the house or in its cage.

Too bad a Ross man didn’t do that.

Police say the unidentified individual is behind the 3-foot albino python, now nicknamed “Naners,” found near the Ross Community Park baseball diamond at Tuesday’s Fourth of July festivities.

Four more snakes loosed by the same person have yet to be located. The 7-foot rat snake is indigenous to Pennsylvania. The 7-foot bredli python and two juvenile ball pythons — only about 1.5 feet each — are not.

And that is what takes this from being just a quirky news story to an actual issue. Find a snake in your yard in Pennsylvania? That’s a normal Tuesday. Find a snake as long as your car and native to South Asia? That’s a different story.

Nonnative species are a problem. Whether plants like callery pear or a fish like the northern snakehead or an insect like the emerald ash borer, taking an animal from one place to another might not seem like a big deal. But the impact on the local ecosystem can be profound.

This can be inadvertent. No one ever intended to inflict Pennsylvania with the spotted lanternfly. They are believed to have ended up here as eggs attached to stone that arrived here from China. They were first identified in Pennsylvania in 2014. Nine years later, they stretch across the state and threaten the state’s agriculture.

But that’s not what happens with pythons. The situation in Ross is much like what has happened in Florida, where snakes have been routinely released by owners who became bored with their pets or could no longer afford them. Florida’s climate is perfect for the slithery serpents, and the state now has a population of pythons in the wild, feeding on the native species.

Maybe that doesn’t seem like it could happen in Pennsylvania. The climate is different. Would released pythons really take root in the cooler weather? Maybe not, but then it’s just a slow way to kill what once was a family pet. But we also don’t know how an animal would integrate itself into a nonnative environment until it happens.

Releasing an animal into the wild that doesn’t belong there is irresponsible — not just as a pet owner but as a Pennsylvanian. It abdicates the responsibility that was assumed for the animal. More than that, it goes against the responsibility we all have to care for our community.