SASCHA WIL­SON

Se­nior Re­porter

There was shock and ex­cite­ment at Man­zanil­la Sec­ondary this morn­ing when stu­dents spot­ted a snake in the As­sem­bly Hall's ceil­ing.

De­spite the un­ex­pect­ed vis­i­tor, as­sem­bly was held in the hall and class­es con­tin­ues as usu­al.

 In a tele­phone in­ter­view short­ly be­fore mid­day, Health and Safe­ty of­fi­cer Mar­cell Thomas con­firmed they were still await­ing the ar­rival of the au­thor­i­ties to re­move the boa con­stric­tor al­so called maca­juel.

The snake has since re­treat­ed in­to the ceil­ing, but Thomas es­ti­mates it could be about 10 feet or longer and about six inch­es in width. 

Giv­en the bushy and iso­lat­ed lo­ca­tion of the school, he said they usu­al­ly find snakes in the school, but this was the biggest so far. He said a few stu­dents no­ticed the snake in the ceil­ing when they ar­rived just af­ter 7 am. The front half of its body was show­ing. 

Last year an 18-inch-long snake had slith­ered on­to the com­pound.

80 per cent of the stu­dents are from with­in the area, he said snakes were a com­mon sight for them, so no one pan­icked.

"It's in the ceil­ing so see­ing it is a great amount of ex­cite­ment but the thing about it is that we had our as­sem­bly in the hall so when was 8  o'clock and time for as­sem­bly they would stay far away from that area. Some of them said they did not want to go. It's re­al­ly just ex­cite­ment."

He be­lieves the snake had been lurk­ing in the ceil­ing for quite a while feast­ing on pi­geons. How­ev­er, he said ear­li­er this year they re­moved the pi­geons.

Dur­ing as­sem­bly, he said the stu­dents were ad­vised about the type of snake and what they should do and not do.

Mean­while, he con­tact­ed two wildlife groups and spoke to a game war­den who as­sured him some­one would come to re­move the snake.