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Tragic photos emerge of brothers cleaning snake pen months before python killed them in their sleep

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(FACEBOOK/Mandy Trecartin)

Mandy Trecartin

Mandy Trecartin (FACEBOOK/Mandy Trecartin)

TORONTO — Tragic photos have emerged of the two brothers strangled to death by a huge python as they slept, showing the boys happily playing and cleaning their neighbor’s snake enclosure.

The pictures on their mother’s Facebook page shows Noah Barte, 4, and his brother Connor, 6, smiling as they wash and scrub the enclosure, which mom Mandy Trecartin identifies as a anaconda habitat.

What started as a cleaning exercise, quickly turned into a waterpark, Trecartin says of the photos.

“My friends [and neighbours (sic)] house,” she wrote on the Facebook photo.

“The anaconda was originally in the tank but has been moved so the boys are “cleaning” it! LOL”

A shocked community in Canada planned a vigil Wednesday for the two boys small boys strangled by a 100-pound African rock python that slithered into their room from their neighbor’s apartment.

Investigators said they were waiting for the results of an autopsy as well as a necropsy on the snake before commenting further on the cause of death. Both have been performed, Royal Canadian Mounted Police Const. Julie Rogers-Marsh said Wednesday.

The snake apparently escaped from its enclosure in the neighbor’s apartment, slithered through a ventilation system and fell through the ceiling into the room where the young boys were sleeping, authorities said Tuesday.

A snake expert said it was possible that the African rock python was spooked and simply clung to whatever it landed on. Police are treating the deaths in Campbellton, New Brunswick, as a criminal investigation.

The brothers had been visiting the apartment of a friend whose father owned an exotic pet store on the floor below, Royal Canadian Mounted Police Sgt. Alain Tremblay said. Tremblay said the 14-foot snake was being kept inside the apartment, not inside the pet store as authorities had previously stated.

Steve Benteau, a spokesman for the provincial Natural Resources Department, said no permit was issued for an African rock python, and provincial authorities weren’t aware it was being kept at the apartment. The department said the snake is generally only permitted in accredited zoos, unless there is a special permit.

Tremblay said the snake was housed in a large glass enclosure that reached the ceiling of the apartment and escaped through a small hole in the ceiling connected to the ventilation system. He said the snake made its way through the ventilation system, the pipe collapsed and the snake fell.

The friend of the boys was sleeping in another room and was unharmed.

The pet store owner, Jean-Claude Savoie, told the Global News television station that he didn’t hear a sound and discovered the “horrific scene” when he went into his living room on Monday morning.

Police said the snake was killed by a veterinarian. It was sent for a necropsy to confirm the type of snake and help understand what may have caused it to attack.

Reptile expert Bry Loyst, curator of the Indian River Reptile Zoo in Ontario, said police have been seeking his advice. He said police told him it wasn’t the first time that the python had escaped its enclosure. Rogers-Marsh said she could not confirm that because she had not heard that.

Loyst said the boys had been playing with other animals hours earlier, and he believes their scent might have attracted the snake.

Family spokesman Dave Rose, the boys’ great-uncle, said the brothers had spent Monday at Savoie’s family farm and played with llamas, goats, horses and dogs and cats before staying over at the apartment.

Paul Goulet, founder and co-owner of Little Ray’s Reptile Zoo in Ottawa, said snakes don’t recognize humans as a source of food, but if the children smelled like animals, it could explain an attack.

“If a snake sees an animal moving, giving off heat and smells like a goat, what is it? It’s a goat,” Goulet said.

Snake expert John Kendrick, a manager at the Reptile Store in Hamilton, Ontario, said it sounds like the snake might have been spooked.

Pythons can sense heat, and if they are startled they can grab something, Kendrick said. He said their muscles run lengthwise through their body, so they are not very stable unless they are holding on to something.

It’s possible that the python was just holding on to what it landed on, Kendrick said.

“Once they are in constricting mode, any part of their body that is touching something that moves, they’ll wrap it,” he said. “I’ve seen snakes with two different prey items at the same time, one with the back of the body and one with the front. It could have been an incident like that.”

With Associated Press