Vermont College Suspects Someone Stole Their Missing 4-Foot-Long Brazilian Rainbow Boa Constrictor

A small liberal-arts college in western Vermont has lost a 4-foot-long Brazilian rainbow boa constrictor.

The Associated Press reports Castleton State College asked students and staff to keep an eye out for the snake, which apparently escaped from its cage at the school's zoology lab. Boa constrictors typically become tame in captivity and are rarely dangerous to humans, and the college said its animal was trained to eat only frozen, dead mice.

The snake was last seen Friday, when employees locked down the science labs at the school's Jeffords Science Building for the weekend, the Rutland Herald noted. At the time, the boa remained safe and sound in its heated cage.

School officials discovered that the boa constrictor was missing on Tuesday morning and alerted the campus community in an email.

Castleton's boa, which boasts bright orange skin, was housed in a cage with a weighted lid, Jeff Weld, the college's director of marketing and communications, said. The enclosure was placed in a classroom, whose door, in turn, was locked.

Since school officials are not quite sure how the boa could have made its way out of such a tightly controlled environment, they said they are looking into whether the animal may have been stolen. They suspect foul play may be involved in the tropical snake's disappearance.

"We're treating this like a larceny," said Keith Molinari, Castleton State College's director of public safety. "It's under investigation the same way any other theft would be."

Boa constrictors are native to North, Central and South America, as well as some Caribbean islands. Because of their bright and distinctive color pattern, the large, heavy-bodied snakes often form part of private and public collections.

The animals' bodies can be tan, green, red or yellow, and they display cryptic patterns of jagged lines, ovals, diamonds and circles, according to National Geographic. They can grow up to 13 feet long and weigh more than 100 pounds.

Although boa constrictors are not poisonous, they use their jaws lined with small, hooked teeth to grab and hold prey and then wrap their muscular bodies around it until it suffocates. The snakes' common victims include birds, monkeys and wild pigs.