Thieves mistakenly steal bag with 4 live snakes inside

A reptile breeder in the SF Bay Area says he'd just finished giving a talk and was packing up in the parking lot when thieves stole one of his duffel bags containing four live snakes.

The man says the thieves probably thought it was full of something valuable other than, say, four live snakes.

Two of the four snakes have been retrieved so far, says Brian Gunday, who told KRON-4 News his beloved serpents were found inside a trash dumpster, probably after the bad guys figured out what was inside the stolen duffel bag:

"I went and walked to my car, got in it, backed out. As I backed out I noticed there was some people at the other end of the parking lot where my gear was and I didn't think anything of it," he said.

Gunday said as he got out of his car, he noticed his duffel bag was gone. Three ball pythons, a baby albino caramel Burmese python and a blue-tailed skink were inside the duffel bag. Gundy believes whoever stole his bag had quite the surprise once they opened it.

"They picked it up. It was probably heavy, probably 30 pounds in someone's mind probably camera equipment or computer gear," he said.

Since the snakes went missing on Saturday, two of them turned up in a dumpster. Gunday's proudly wearing one of the recovered snakes.

"This is shorty. Shorty is a caramel albino Burmese python," Gunday said. "He's about three-months-old or so and this snake will grow to 13 or 15 feet long."

The stolen snakes are worth thousands of dollars but gundy says it's not about the money. He says he's most concerned about the safety of the animals and hopes to have the rest returned.

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Thieves steal bag of snakes from reptile breeder in San Jose [kron4.com]