A trip home from school was routine, except for the huge snake in the road

Brooke and Chris Dawson were just heading back home from dropping off their daughter at school Wednesday morning when something unusual came across their morning commute — a Burmese python.

Lucky for them, not the snake, it was already dead.

“You couldn’t miss it. There was a massive gigantic snake in the middle of the road,” Brooke Dawson told the Bradenton Herald on Friday.

The Ruskin couple was driving home north along U.S. 41 near Port Manatee when they found the dead Burmese python.

Their daughter, a student at Imagine Charter School in Parrish, had missed the school bus so they had to take her to school, she said. Brooke Dawson said she was driving while her husband was busy on his phone, so he didn’t see her pass the snake.

But she did more than tell him. Brooke Dawson said she made a U-turn. When they got out of the car, she said, her husband dragged the 9.5-foot Burmese python out of the road, and they took it to their home in Ruskin.

After reporting their find, a Fish and Wildlife Commission investigator came to the couple’s home. The dead python was scanned for a chip to determine if it was a registered pet, but a chip was not detected, FWC spokeswoman Melody Kilborn confirmed.

The investigator told the Dawsons they couldn’t confirm if it was a male or female. But the investigator took the snake’s body for further investigation.

With permission from FWC supervisors, they let the couple keep one thing — the snake’s hide.

Brooke Dawson said her husband had already skinned the Burmese python. He has since nailed it to a board and put it out in the sun to dry. When it’s dry, they intend to properly preserve it and frame it to hang somewhere.

The couple’s findings have many people on social media, including Brooke Dawson, wondering if it was the snake captured by a Parrish resident’s wildlife camera. But FWC said it’s high unlikely.

An FWC investigator also responded to the Parrish home and reviewed the camera footage but could not determine for certain that it was a Burmese python pictured. The video is dark and shows a snake coiled up. Even FWC biologists reviewed the footage and could not determine what kind of snake it was.

“It’s possible, but our investigators could not confirm that it was a Burmese python,” Kilborn said.

This story was originally published November 17, 2017 at 7:37 PM with the headline "A trip home from school was routine, except for the huge snake in the road."