Police were able to extract the snakes from the Bell City Motel room

Aug 17, 2013 06:57 GMT  ·  By

40 snakes have been confiscated from a hotel room in Ontario Canada, where witnesses claim to have also spotted children.

According to City News, the incident took place this week in Brantford, Ontario. The snakes are not venomous but other guests in the facility have stated that the owners have brought five children with them.

One of the kids in the room was a baby, a person staying in a room adjacent to the snake owners said.

"The snakes were not being suitably cared for and were in distress," a rep for the local police has stated.

They were 30 centimeters to 1.4 meters long and they were being held in plastic bins. Law enforcement officials raided the room on Thursday night, seizing the snakes.

Owning one of them in Brantford is against the law, but a couple staying the night at the hotel had brought in dozens.

The manager at Bell City Motel has explained that the unnamed couple has been evicted, most likely for owning the pets.

The landlord of their former apartment also alerted authorities and sent them out to the motel where the pair had been staying at for a night.

When police raided the room on Thursday evening, they were out eating dinner. Experts for the Brant County SPCA have identified the pets as ball pythons, the smallest type of African pythons.

"The overcrowding and the lack of water was the main concern at that point," describes Brandon James, animal cruelty inspector at the Brant County SPCA.

James also referenced a case in Campbellton, New Brunswick, in which a python killed two boys. As I have noted, it escaped from a reptile store and made its way into a private residence.

"It's not the type that was involved in the New Brunswick issues, which I think everyone is kind of thinking when there's a large exotic snake removal. [...] But I haven't had any issues with these snakes, they're very well handled," James says.