HATTIESBURG — A baby snake bit an N.R. Burger Middle School teacher in her classroom, and others were found in the building two more times earlier this month.
Jas N Smith, Hattiesburg Public School District spokesman, said a baby snake was found in a classroom, a second inside a desk and a third in the school’s office. All the discoveries occurred around the first of April.
Smith said the teacher was bitten while trying to ease the snake out of her classroom with a pencil.
“The teacher was taken to the emergency room, treated and released,” said Smith, who added the teacher’s name is not being released. “She’s back at school and doing just fine.”
Dunagin Pest Control in Hattiesburg, he said, removed the snakes and inspected the campus, spraying chemicals to kill mice and insects, both part of a snake’s diet.
“The snakes were so young and small, they weren’t sure what species they were,” said Smith, who added no adult snakes or eggs were found in the school. “They’re not totally sure how the snakes got inside.”
Smith said maintenance workers have replaced a few door jams and patched small openings along the building’s exterior. As a precaution, he said, brush will be cleared from the school’s exterior.
Smith said a letter explaining the incidents will be sent home to parents.
“We’re staying on top of it,” he said. “We definitely don’t want this to happen again.”
But that might not be possible at this time of year.
“They’re starting to come out full force,” said Cody Dunnam, a herpetologist who founded Scales and Tails Inc., a free reptile rescue operation in Lumberton.
Dunnam, who has worked with snakes for the past nine years, urges Pine Belt residents to be on the lookout for reptiles.
“Snakes are cold-blooded and this continuous warm weather we’ve been having brings them out to warm up their bodies,” he said. “And anywhere you have mice or frogs, you’re going to attract snakes because that’s their basic diet.”
The Pine Belt is home to a variety of snakes including Texas rat snakes, black racers, copperheads, diamondback rattlers, cottonmouths and speckled king snakes, Dunnam said.
Mississippi has nine poisonous species: the eastern diamondback, coral snake, timber rattlesnake and two species each of copperheads, cotton mouths and pigmy snakes.
“If you see a snake, the best thing to do is to just leave it alone,” Dunnam advises.