Charles Jason Darnell 9-1-1 Call Transcript:
“Our stupid snake got out in the middle of the night and strangled the baby!”
Our snake, we have a Burmese Python … she’s about 12 foot long … she got out of the cage last night and got into the baby’s crib and strangled her to death.
A 12-foot pet Burmese python escaped from a home terrarium and strangled Shaunnia Hare, 2, in her bedroom in central Florida.
The two-year-old girl was already dead when paramedics arrived at about 10am on Wednesday.
The owner of the Burmese Python snake that is known to be a predator of small mammals is Charles Jason Darnell, who is also the boyfriend of Shaunnia’s mother. He discovered the snake missing from its terrarium and, fearing the worse, went to the Shaunnia’s room, and found her dead. The girl was still wrapped in the snake, which is known to kill by constricting the chest of its prey and causing death by suffocation. Shaunnia also had bite marks on her forehead.
Darnell stabbed the snake and was able to free Shaunnia from its hold on the girl. Still alive, the snake was handled by police and wildlife officials and was placed in a bag then inside a dog crate.
The snake will be placed with someone who has a permit, pending an investigation into the girl’s death.
The Humane Society of the United States reports that at least 12 people have been killed in the US by pet pythons since 1980, including five children.
Burmese pythons are not native to Florida, but have become a problem as some owners irresponsibly have freed pythons into the wild, resulting in a python population of them has taken hold in the Everglades. Some Burmese pythons escaped in 1992 from pet shops during devastation caused by Hurricane Andrew. The snakes have been reproducing in the wild.
When the snakes grow to full size, even human adults can be overpowered by pythons.
A young hawk was found with an injured or malformed wing and was sitting still in a tree for hours on Sunday. Flint Creek Wildlife Rehabilitation, Inc. was called on Sunday and returned a call on Monday about noon. The hawk left its perch in north-central Arlington Heights sometime during the day on Sunday.
Dawn Keller, Flint Creek Wildlife Rehabilitation, Inc. founder, advised that rescuers generally do not chase a hawk that is perched 15-feet high in a tree. Advice was given that the hawk will eventually come to the ground to look for food. The hawk’s landing on the ground gives the best opportunity for capture. Flint Creek recommended placing a recycling bin overturned over the hawk and possibly a weight, like a large rock, on top of the overturned recycling bin. Then Flint Creek recommended another call for help to have Flint Creek Wildlife Rehabilitation come out and pick up the hawk. Flint Creek Wildlife Rehabilitation advises against giving food or water to the hawk because of risk of injury to an inexperienced caregiver.
A hawk that is rescued with a broken wing hopefully will get treatment with a splint or even surgery for a hopeful outcome. Successful treatment outcomes result in hawks being released to the wild, while birds with non-functional wings may find residence in a caged sanctuary or educational facility.
The hawk swooped down on rabbit and knocked it unconscious, waited a few seconds, then got a firm grip with its talons, looked around and took off into a pine tree in northern Arlington Heights bout 9:30 a.m. Saturday, July 5th, 2008.
Hawk with a rabbit pinned to a tree branch with its talons.
The male red-winged blackbird, about 8 inches long with red-winged shoulders, is aggressively territorial during nesting season, which runs approximately from late May through mid-July.
Redwing Blackbirds usually nest in marshes, fields and bushes — often near lakes and ponds. They can also nest near city parks and large vacant lots, around ponds and especially along the Lake Michigan lakefront.
Male blackbird aggressiveness lasts about one month and in some reports they’ve been known to follow targets for up to 100 yards.
Redwing Blackbirds are popular at Lake Arlington, Busse Woods and Buffalo Creek near Lake Cook Road and Arlington Heights Road.
Several reports of attacks have been reported on West Grand Avenue near Rockwell Street in Chicago.
Early morning Friday, a 5.2 magnitude earthquake felt in skyscrapers in Chicago and homes in Cincinnati, but appeared to cause no major injuries or damage. Minor structural damage and messes inside homes and businesses reported in Mount Carmel, 15 miles southeast of the earthquake’s epicenter.
The quake occurred at about 4:37 a.m. and was centered six miles from West Salem, IL. Reports felt in Milwaukee, Des Moines, Iowa, and Atlanta.
The quake is believed to have involved the Wabash fault, a northern extension of the New Madrid fault about six miles north of Mount Carmel, Illinois.
FOXNEWS Chicago news report of Roscoe Village cougar.
A fully-grown cougar was shot around 5:30 p.m. Monday near 3422 North Hoyne in the Roscoe Village neighborhood of Chicago. The cougar was able to flee about 100 to 150 feet before collapsing and dying in an open space between garages in a back alley between the parallel streets of Hoyne and Hamilton. The cougar, shot in a multitude of about 15 to 18 rounds of Chicago Police Department gunfire, weighed 122 pounds and was five feet long, not including the animal’s tail.
Roscoe Village neighborhood residents were ordered in their homes while Chicago police chased the mountain lion with guns drawn. Animal control officers with tranquilizer guns had been called earlier in the day when the cougar was first sighted by Rosa Lobato, but the tranquilizers were not available when police officers were confronted with an agitated large cat later in the day. The cougar, roaming a neighborhood near a grade school (Audubon Elementary School), was able to leap six-foot fences during the chase and in one video image is seen sneaking behind a Chicago police officer walking in an opposite direction.
Roscoe Village cougar sneaks behind a Chicago Police officer Monday.
Neighbor Dana Dinello at first thought the cougar was a dog “trotting through” because of its size. Michael Bauknecht was one of the first to call 9-1-1 during the evening sighting. Rich Cebulak also witnessed the cougar and thought it was a dog at first running out from under his porch, but then realized he was seeing ‘a lion.’
A cougar was also reported in Wilmette recently near a CTA transit station April 12 and in North Chicago March 27th.
Chicago cougar story was the top news story on the local news and carried on network news.
Cougars are native to America having the greatest range of any wild land animal in the Western Hemisphere. Cougars are stalk and ambush predators. A report in the journal Wilderness and Environmental Medicine reports details of a nonfatal cougar attack of an eight-year-old, 65-pound girl in British Columbia in July 2002. A two-year-old male cougar silently pounced on the girl who was bending over on the beach to look at a hermit crab. The cougar jumped out after hiding beyond the edge of a nearby forest. The 100-pound cat attacked the girl’s neck in the instinctual style of lion predators, sinking its teeth into the posterior aspect of the girl’s neck and carrying her down the beach for about 20 seconds while she did not respond and her body went limp. A group of adults chased and screamed at the attacking cougar and threw stones. The girl’s father approached the cougar as it tried to re-enter the forest “bellowing” loudly with his hands waving over his head. The cougar reversed his direction at first, but then dropped the girl and climbed a tree.
A family physician was part of the group of adults and quickly treated the stricken girl. He found nine puncture wounds to the posterior skull, upper arm, posterior and lateral neck and upper back. There were also scratch marks on her face and back.
The girls lost about 200 ml of blood, but on first impression had no major neck blood vessel damage, no spine fractures and no puncture lungs. At the hospital all serious injuries were ruled out and the only serious damage was a small region of severed trapezius muscle that was removed, and psychological trauma.
The cougar was shot and killed in British Columbia and its head was sent to a lab where a rabies test was negative.
More info … McKee, Denise (2003). Cougar Attacks on Humans: A Case Report. Wilderness and Environmental Medicine 14 (3): 169–73. Wilderness Medical Society. Retrieved on 2007-05-20.
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