These kids say the prospect of a giant snake in Westbrook river won’t stop them from enjoying a swim. pic.twitter.com/naygAldsBa
— Danielle Waugh (@DanielleWaugh) June 30, 2016
WESTBROOK — There’s a woman walking languidly along the banks of the Presumpscot River next to Riverbank Park. She scoffed at the idea of a roaming python, 10 feet long with the head the size of a soccer ball.
Afraid of one measly snake? Hardly.
Then her three young sons climbed down the bank and to the very edge of the water — and suddenly, the woman was not so languid. Her afternoon stroll had turned into an all-out sprint.
“Get away from the water!” she hollered as she ran toward her kids. “Get away from that river right now!”
There’s no reason to fear, perhaps — but why take chances?
“When I came down here, my daughter said, ‘Don’t go near the river, Mom. Stay on the trail,'” said 50-year-old Cathy Hill, who was visiting from Texas. “I haven’t been too worried about it, though.”
In Westbrook, that’s what they all say. A day after two police officers reported spotting the snake, it wasn’t fear but curiosity that drew people to Riverbank Park.
“I haven’t seen the snake,” said Joel Arnold, a 33-year-old who lives a mile and a half from the park. “But I’d really like to.”
Joel sounded downright eager as he headed off on foot toward the water. His wife, Jenny, didn’t look so convinced.
“I don’t think I’d go anywhere near a snake that big,” she said. “Although, I would try to take a picture.”
Just as Jenny finished that thought, an 8-year-old boy named Rory came charging over, all red-faced and out of breath.
“I just saw some bubbles!” he reported. “On the river!”
A man walking a dog overheard part of this conversation and scooted over.
“Did somebody see it?” he said. “Did somebody see the snake again?”
Excited? You could say that. Whether you want to call it “Wessie” or “The Presumpscot Python,” the mysterious and reportedly massive snake was sparking imaginations in and around Westbrook.
“I think that earlier, people didn’t really believe it,” Eleanor Grackbill said. “But now that two cops have seen it, that adds a bit of credibility.”
Grackbill was riding shotgun in a car driven by Michael Torlen. They live in Westbrook, they said, and came to the park to witness the buzz for themselves.
Did they see any sign of the snake? No. And if they did glimpse the enigmatic asp, Torlen is not so sure he’d be able to produce evidence of it.
“I’d like to get a picture of it,” he said, “but it probably wouldn’t occur to us.”
The two cops who spotted the snake early Wednesday morning also reported that they had watched it eat a beaver before gliding across the river toward Brown Street. It’s a detail that, for some, adds a new level of mystique.
“Oh, I wouldn’t doubt at all that it ate a beaver,” said a man named Jim, who was sitting in his car next to the river. “I don’t think it would eat a kid or anything like that, though.”
It’s a comforting thought, and Jim seems to know what he’s talking about — he fishes on the Presumpscot all the time, after all, and he often parks next to it to relax with a cup of coffee.
But the river isn’t typically as exciting as it was on Wednesday.
“People keep driving by, and I can hear their conversations,” he said. “They’re all talking about the snake. There are people out here hunting it, I think.”
Police described the snake as roughly 10 feet long. That description has been modified somewhat by those with a more creative approach to the matter.
“As long as a truck and with a head the size of a watermelon,” said a woman at Westbrook Bowling Lanes roughly two miles from the river. “A snake that size could wrap right around a person and digest it whole.”
The woman admitted that she hadn’t seen the snake herself. But she had heard things.
Meanwhile, Cathy Hill continued walking her terrier, Joey, near the river’s edge at Riverbank Park. She tends to believe current descriptions of the snake, she said. She believes that it chowed down on a beaver, too.
“And if he did eat a beaver, he’s probably all snuggled up by now, in the mud or in a tree,” Hill said, glancing at the hanging tree limbs above her.
At a bar on Brown Street, across the river from the park, people were talking about the snake. They were talking about the snake at the doughnut shops, the tattoo parlors and in the corner stores, too.
Not to mention the Facebook page and the Twitter account dedicated to Westbrook’s new mascot.
At Riverbank Park on Wednesday, the search for “Wessie” (or “The Presumpscot Python”) was an all-day wonder. Several people speculated that the snake is likely somebody’s runaway pet.
“And that person is never going to own up to it,” Hill said. “Not after all of this publicity.”
“I think it’s probably a boa or a ball python,” Jim said, “and that it was somebody’s pet at some point.”
The river on Wednesday was flat and brown, its waters barely moving under the hot sun. Ducks skimmed across its surface. Frogs croaked off in the weeds.
Rory, the 8-year-old, was fascinated — not scared, mind you — he has a pet snake of his own, after all.
Lisa King, a family friend who was baby-sitting Rory, was likewise not too worried that the snake would turn into a horror movie man-eater, snatching children out of their mother’s arms or any of that Hollywood-style drama.
“I think I’d be more worried about small animals,” she said.
Nevertheless, she stuck very close to Rory’s side and whenever he ventured too close to the river, she’d steer him away again. The snake probably didn’t present any danger to people, she surmised.
But why take chances?
mlaflamme@sunjournal.com
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