Sascha Wil­son

A man dressed in a blue over­all walk­ing along Ca­paro Road in Ari­ma with a large liv­ing snake caused quite a com­mo­tion yes­ter­day.

A se­ries of videos be­gan pop­ping up on so­cial me­dia late Mon­day show­ing the man proud­ly dis­play­ing the eight-feet long, es­ti­mat­ed 200- pound, Boa con­stric­tor, com­mon­ly called a maca­juel lo­cal­ly.

The man ini­tial­ly had the snake's neck in a firm grip while he held the low­er part of its body with his oth­er hand. He even slung the snake across his shoul­der. At one point, though, the snake was dropped on the ground and seemed bare­ly alive.

A crowd gath­ered to see the snake, with some chanc­ing a touch while oth­ers took videos and pho­tos of it. But, no one showed any sym­pa­thy. It is not cer­tain whether the snake sur­vived the or­deal.

The man, how­ev­er, may have got­ten more at­ten­tion than he bar­gained for as the Wildlife Sec­tion of the Forestry Di­vi­sion has launched an in­ves­ti­ga­tion based on the videos.

Maca­juel snakes are pro­tect­ed in this coun­try and hunt­ing a pro­tect­ed an­i­mal car­ries a fine of $100,000. Se­nior Game War­den Steve Seep­er­sad told Guardian Me­dia he was dis­ap­point­ed that no one con­tact­ed the Wildlife Sec­tion or re­port­ed the in­ci­dent to the po­lice. He said the maca­juel is a non-ven­omous snake and is harm­less. How­ev­er, he said if pro­voked it will de­fend it­self.

With the rainy sea­son in full swing, Seep­er­sad said he is ex­pect­ing more snake sight­ings across the coun­try, par­tic­u­lar­ly in flood-prone ar­eas.

"Peo­ple, in gen­er­al, have a pho­bia about snakes. They think all snakes are dan­ger­ous. The fact that the rainy sea­son is up­on us will cause snakes to come out of hid­ing to look for high­er ground, es­pe­cial­ly in low-ly­ing ar­eas that are prone to flood­ing," Seep­er­sad said.

He, how­ev­er, be­lieves the snake was killed. Urg­ing peo­ple not to at­tempt to cap­ture or harm the snakes, he ad­vised them to call the Wildlife Di­vi­sion or con­tact the po­lice, who would in­form the rel­e­vant agen­cies.