Metro

Bronx Zoo cobra found; what would you name it?

PHEW: The famous cobra is ready for her close-up yesterday. (AP)

Ssssssafe!

The city’s most famous escape artist — a slippery Egyptian cobra — was finally caged yesterday nearly a week after pulling off a Houdini-esque breakout from her enclosure at the Bronx Zoo.

Six days after the snake’s desperate dash for freedom, the zoo’s pet detectives finally caught up to the pencil-thin, 20-inch adolescent female yesterday morning, finding her curled up in a “secluded, dark corner” inside the non-public area of the reptile house, zoo director Jim Breheny said.

“The strategy we used was patience,” he said. “We gave her some time to feel comfortable and safe so she would come out and explore her environment.”

Name the cobra. Click here to leave your suggestion in comments.

The snake’s disappearing act rattled zoo staff and caused an Internet firestorm, complete with spoof Twitter posts and people looking to hawk cobra-themed merchandise.

“The Bronx Zoo snake never made it out of the zoo. Bigger disappointment than balloon boy,” posted one Twitter user, @sarahplease, after the cobra was found.

Another, @CaMacKid, tweeted: “Wait . . . the snake just April fooled us all. He was hiding at the zoo all along.”

The building where the cobra was hiding, the World of Reptiles, had been locked down since a worker discovered the sneaky serpent was missing on Friday.

Handlers had lowered the lights inside, kept the noise level down “and we put down wood shavings used by mice and rats so the scent would bring her out,” Breheny said.

Staff had been conducting searches for the roving reptile at least three times a day and feared it could have slithered into the zoo’s underground maze of pipes, ducts and wiring conduits. But ultimately, it was right under their noses.

“[The search] took a while because this a labyrinth of pipes and equipment. There were a lot of places it could hide,” Breheny said. “We found it a couple hundred feet from the cage.”

She was eventually snared using special snake-handling hooks on the end of poles.

Breheny would not specify when the reptile house would reopen or how the snake escaped in the first place. He said that no staffers had been fired over the escape and that the zoo had not changed its snake-care policies.

“We will review how she escaped,” he said. “Right now, we’ve been double-checking our protocol.”

The 3-ounce snake arrived at the zoo in February and had been in a non-public holding area when she slithered away.

Breheny said the snake does not yet have a name, but the zoo may hold a contest to give it one.

After the cobra was found, people living near the zoo who had been jittery for days suddenly got brave.

“I’m not afraid of a snake,” said Bernadette Washington, 52, who lives across the street from the Bronx facility. “It’s probably more fun to go to the zoo if animals are on the loose anyway.”