A Maryland man with 124 pet snakes in his home died of a snake bite, officials said

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A Maryland man with 124 pet snakes in his home died of a snake bite, officials said
Albino Burmese pythons (Python molurus bivittatus) are one of the five largest snakes in the world, native to a large variation of tropic and subtropic areas of South and Southeast Asia.Risa Krisadhi/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images
  • A Maryland man with 124 snakes in his home died of a snake bite, officials said earlier this week.
  • The man was found dead in his home in January after a neighbor saw him unresponsive through a window.
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A Maryland man who was found dead in his home with more than 100 snakes died of a snake bite, officials determined this week.

The 49-year-old man, whose name was not made publicly available, was found unresponsive in his home in Pomfret, Maryland, on January 19, after a neighbor said he didn't see the man in about a day and was able to see through a window that the man was on the ground, WRC-TV reported at the time.

When officers arrived to the man's home, they found a collection of 124 snakes, including rattlesnakes, cobras, black mambas, and a 14-foot-long Burmese python.

"Our chief animal control officer said in his more than 30 years of experience, he had not encountered this kind of thing before," Charles County spokeswoman Jennifer Harris said at the time.

Officials said all of the animals were in cages upon the deputies' arrival and were cared for "meticulously," according to WRC-TV.

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"They were all very properly secured. They were racked," Harris said in January. "He did not keep a lot of furniture inside the home, so there was no place if a snake, for example, were to escape, where it could hide or harm anybody."

Some of the reptiles found in the house were venomous snakes that are illegal to keep in Maryland, Harris said. Charles county animal control officials handled the non-venomous snakes in the collection, while experts handled the venomous ones.

The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner ruled the man's cause of death as "snake envenomation," according to WRC-TV. His death was accidental.

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