Big Maine Snake & Richard Burton

I’m trying to take off to Alberta, and the stories just keep rolling in…now here’s one from Gorham, Maine, merely a few miles from where I am right now.

According to the Associated Press and local media, Mara Ranger will be a little paranoid doing laundry now. When she was removing clothes from the washing machine at her Maine farmhouse Wednesday, the clothes moved. She told WMTW-TV, “I jumped back” and saw a snake. She quickly shut the lid and called for help.

Maine Animal Damage Control operator Richard Burton reached into the machine and pulled and pulled — all 8 feet of a reticulated python.

Burton guesses the snake got into Ranger’s washing machine through water pipes. The snake’s future home will be York Animal Kingdom in York.

Ranger is going to start looking into every corner of her washing machine. She says, “I’m going to be looking in the tub first — before and after, maybe even during, the rinse cycle.”

The currently best-known Richard Burton (November 10, 1925 – August 5, 1984) was a Welsh multiple award-winning actor. His is perhaps most remembered for playing Mark Antony in the motion picture Cleopatra (1963), when Cleopatra, played by Elizabeth Taylor had to divide her affections between an asp and Burton. The hot couple of that era later married when their mutual divorces were finalized, and later divorced too.

But there is another historical Richard Burton, known to have dealt with giant snakes too, in traveler’s tales at least, if not in reality. This is Captain Sir Richard Burton (March 19, 1821 – October 20, 1890), who was an English explorer, translator, writer, soldier, orientalist, ethnologist, anthropologist, sexologist, linguist, poet, hypnotist, fencer and diplomat. He was known for his travels, treks, and explorations within Asia and Africa as well as his extraordinary knowledge of languages and cultures. After his death his wife burned many of her husband’s papers, including journals and a planned new book of his. She believed she was acting to protect her husband’s reputation, and imagined she was instructed to burn the manuscript of The Scented Garden by his spirit, but her actions have been widely condemned.

Loren Coleman About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct). Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015. Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.

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