Brown treesnake found in McAlester

McALESTER, Okla. (AP) -- A visitor from Guam was found in McAlester by workers at the McAlester Army Ammunition Plant.<br/><br/>Spokesman Mark Hughes says a 3-and-a-half-foot brown treesnake was discovered

Tuesday, September 27th 2005, 9:44 am

By: News On 6

McALESTER, Okla. (AP) -- A visitor from Guam was found in McAlester by workers at the McAlester Army Ammunition Plant.

Spokesman Mark Hughes says a 3-and-a-half-foot brown treesnake was discovered on a pallet inside a military cargo box shipped to the plant from Guam. The workers killed the snake and used the Internet to identify it before sending it to the Fort Collins Science Center in Colorado.

It's just the second confirmed brown treesnake in the US. The first was found in Corpus Christi, Texas, in 1993 and was also inside a cargo box sent from Guam.

The snake is native to the South Pacific and was accidentally shipped to Guam after World War II. It's blamed for devastating other animal species and agriculture operations in Guam.

Hughes says the ammunition plant gets numerous containers from overseas and workers are constantly on the lookout for non-native species that may be inside.