It seems that you can’t get through the summers in North America anymore without hearing about the crazy crocs in the sewers, city park ponds, and small lakes. Then along comes “Shark Week” on television - actually this week - and someone tends to report a shark here or there off the coast.

As I hinted earlier this year, for the summer of 2009, we may have to add a higher than normal number of giant snake stories into the mix.

Certainly, this year’s sightings in Maine, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and other locations seem to be driving home that possibility. When you start having pythons showing up in recycling centers, as occurred in Maine (see here and here), certainly some kind of trend seems in the works. There’s also a repeating cycle even in locations, dates, and strangely enough, the same kind of snakes.

In June of 2007, in Bristol, Pennsylvania, a nine-foot albino python was caught near where 2009’s encounters are occurring.

On Friday, July 10, 2009, a woman was taking a stroll in a trailer park on West Main Street in Annville Township, Lebanon County, Pennsylvania, when she found the 10-foot-long albino Burmese python (below). The owner was unknown, but latter a local man admitted releasing two pythons because he couldn’t care for them any longer. He has been charged with cruelty to animals and introduction of non-native species into the wild.