Elizabeth Clark was walking back to her Lisbon Street apartment from grocery shopping on a mild September evening. She finished running her errands at Wegmans and was excited to relax with her boyfriend.
But something caught Clark’s attention on her way home.
“I just looked up from my phone, and I saw a huge snake,” Clark, a graduate student studying natural sciences, said. “I was like, no way this is real. Then I kind of just stared at it, I took a video, and then I kept walking to go home and tell my roommate.”
Clark says that as she was making her way back to her apartment she noticed a family heading in the direction of the snake.
“I was like, ‘Hey guys just so you know there’s a really big snake right there,’” she said. “Then it was just me and this family staring at this snake together in confusion.”
Clark had assumed that the family she warned called animal control because she didn’t see the snake after her initial encounter.
“I didn’t really know what to do,” Clark said. “Looking back I probably should’ve called animal control.”
The Spectrum called Buffalo Animal Shelter, Buffalo Animal Exterminator and Tonawanda Animal Control. None reported having captured the snake.
At 7:30 p.m. that same night, there was another sighting.
Grant Letcher, a senior civil engineering major and another Lisbon Street resident, had his own snake encounter.
Letcher and his roommates were hanging out on their apartment’s balcony doing homework when a neighborhood boy approached them and told them that there was a snake inside the trash bin.
Expecting a garden snake, Letcher and his roommates walked to their garbage bin and opened the lid.
“We all gasped at the sheer size of the snake,” Letcher said. “It was definitely bigger than we all expected.”
Letcher said that a man arrived in a black Dodge, saying that he “received a call about a snake.” This mystery man didn’t have any company vehicle — only gloves and a box to put the snake in.
“If I’m gonna be honest, I don’t think he was actually animal control,” Letcher said. “Me and my roommates didn’t call anyone about a snake.”
Kayla Estrada is a senior news editor and can be reached at kayla.estrada@ubspectrum.com
The news desk can be reached at news@ubspectrum.com
Kayla Estrada is the opinion editor at The Spectrum. She is an English major who enjoys rainy weather, “Bob’s Burgers” and asking people who they voted for. When she’s not writing, she can be found hunting for odd-looking knick-knacks at the nearest thrift store.
Hannah Rashad is an assistant news editor.
Photo: Ryan Hagen | UB Athletics
