(Image source from: Strange fetish of hoarding snakes lands man in jail})

A Californian school teacher has set an awfully bad example for his students, herpetologists and animal lovers across the globe by trapping hundreds of living and dead pythons in his suburban home.

Authorities got a whiff of his strange fetish after neighbors gagged at a fetid 'death' odor emanating from his home and called 911.

 

The 53-year-old William Buchman was arrested after police raided his home and found hundreds of pythons - living and dead and some festered with maggots - trashed in plastic bins everywhere - from floor to ceiling - in the house. Not just that, they also unearthed bins of famished rats and mice who fed on each other as they were scantily fed.

As investigators had to put on respirator masks to carry out the reptiles out of the house by the score and stacked them in the driveway. Some of the snakes had been dead for months.

'The smell alone... I feel like I need to take a shower for a week,' said police Cpl. Anthony Bertagna. 'They're pretty much in all the bedrooms. Everywhere.'

 

Officers rescued as many as 350 snakes, as well as numerous mice and rats, in the Santa Ana home of William Buchman. He was arrested for investigation of neglect in the care of animals, Bertagna said.

"Four of the five bedrooms of his home were stacked from floor to ceiling and wall to wall with plastic bins on wooden and metal racks. The bins were packed so tightly, Berg said, that they didn't require lids because there was no room for the snakes to slither out. Each snake was cataloged by name and type, and Berg said Buchman told authorities he was involved in a snake-breeding enterprise,” reports the Daily Mail.

AW: Suchorita Choudhury