Squeezed Out : Budget Cuts Prompt CSULB to Expel 14-Foot Snake

LONG BEACH — The most recent victim of the budget cuts at Cal State Long Beach is neither a student nor a professor.

It’s Henrietta, a mild-mannered, 14-foot, 140-pound Burmese python who is being kicked out of school. And it could get worse.

“If no one takes her, one of the options is to have her euthanized,” said Dan Zembrano, who has been laid off from his job as an animal caretaker for the College of Natural Sciences. He has taken care of Henrietta since he brought her to the campus 12 years ago while he was an undergraduate biology student.

The snake became part of a mobile science van that traveled to schools throughout Southern California, giving schoolchildren a chance to marvel at her 18-inch girth and to touch her gray-and-yellow mottled skin.

But because of a lack of funding, the van has quit traveling, and plans to make Henrietta the centerpiece of a university natural science museum have been scrapped.

Now, Zembrano--who was laid off due to budget cuts--is searching for a new home for Henrietta. So far, no one is jumping at the offer of a giant snake.

“We are trying to find a zoo or an educational reserve that could take her,” he said. But Burmese pythons are not rare or endangered.

“No one has the facilities or the budget to take a snake her size,” Zembrano said. “To them, she would be a burden.”

University officials say that Henrietta has become a financial burden for them as well. It’s nothing personal, they say, but she eats too much, and she needs constant care by experienced handlers.

“She is very large and capable of inflicting injury if something went wrong,” Zembrano said.

Burmese pythons can grow as long as 24 feet, he said, and are able to strike at 20 m.p.h., powerful enough to knock an unsuspecting bystander to the ground. They also are natural constrictors, he said, and crush their prey before eating it.

But safety concerns will not determine Henrietta’s fate. The College of Natural Sciences has been especially hard hit by the Cal State University budget crunch, Assistant Dean Gary Fung said. Proposed cuts of close to $500,000--or 5.5% of its operating budget--have forced the department to lay off several staff members and scale way back.

“We have to utilize whatever resources we do have for the classroom,” Fung said last week as he joined in the scramble to find Henrietta a home before the fall semester begins Aug. 31. “We just can’t afford her anymore.”

But organizers of a loosely knit save-the-snake movement on campus--which sells shirts emblazoned with “Henrietta, Put the Squeeze on Me”--point out that despite the snake’s Rubensesque figure, she eats just six to eight rats each month. And, they’ve arranged to have the rodents donated.

Otherwise, Henrietta’s needs are few: she requires regular exercise sessions on the grass. On campus she has become a well-known sight as she glides across the lawn into the cool waters of a kiddie pool.

“It’s really cool to see this huge snake on the lawn,” said one student, upset at the news that Henrietta will be leaving the university. “(Having her there) takes an otherwise sterile environment and gives it some character.”

However, it takes three strong people to hoist Henrietta out of her cramped quarters in the basement of the Natural Sciences Building and haul her up the stairs and outdoors.

And now, Zembrano has been laid off and another of Henrietta’s handlers, Pat Mulleavy, was transferred to another department.

“It’s sad to see her go, because so many people love her,” Mulleavy said. “She was a trademark on campus for so long, and now it’s over.”