It’s been a busy week for human-animal relations.
A New Yorker was sentenced this week after admitting to a very strange smuggling operation: transporting three rare Burmese pythons in his pants legs across the U.S.-Canadian border.
Meanwhile, a Rhode Island strangled a coyote to death after suffering an attack, only to catch rabies afterward.
In July 2018, 38-year-old Calvin Bautista took a bus from Montreal to New York with the young snakes concealed in his trousers. Customs officers discovered the animals hidden in tied cloth bags along his inner thighs.
Bautista had illegally purchased the $2,500 pythons, considered vulnerable in their native Asia, from a Canadian reptile store. Import regulations restrict species like Burmese pythons that threaten native U.S. wildlife and ecosystems.
On Wednesday, Bautista received one year’s probation and a $5,000 fine for the incident. His defense attorney declined to comment to the Associated Press.
Meanwhile, tests confirmed rabies in a Rhode Island coyote that attacked a hiker last week before being strangled to death.
The victim was bitten while walking in the woods last Friday. According to the police, the hiker pinned the coyote by his neck, and he killed it by restricting the air supply.
The same coyote likely assaulted a dog walker the previous day, officials added.
Unprovoked daytime attacks by coyotes are extremely rare. Rhode Island officials have counted only two other rabid coyotes in their state since 1994.
In 2020, another man strangled an aggressive coyote on a New Hampshire hiking trail after it threatened his family. However, that animal’s rabies test results remain unclear.
All in all, wild animals got a little too close to humans this week.
The Associated Press contributed to this article.