One of the fun things about being from Louisiana is subscribing to the Twitter feeds of various Louisiana-based news outlets and seeing some of the ridiculous headlines that flash across my dashboard. I would put Louisiana up against any place in the world in its capacity to produce the most insane news stories. From the mouth-breathing rednecks that populate most of the area of the state north of I-10, to the municipal freakshow that is New Orleans, to the crazy coonasses living along the bayous and the swamps (my people!) in the southern part of the state (Oh, have you seen “Swamp People?” yet?) — the state and it’s “eccentric” people combine to create an assembly line of absurdity. Like, at least once a day, some utter weirdness pops up that’ll make me literally spit coffee all over the place if I happen to have a mouth-full of coffee in that moment, and I often do (this story from last week about feral chickens on the loose in New Orleans totally got me). The tweet below is an example of such…
But then, when you click over to the actual news story, it gets even crazier. Specifically, this guy — a Louisiana native apparently living in Texas named David James Beauchemin — wasn’t living with average size snakes. Oh no, he was living with giant freaking snakes!
A Louisiana man wanted in his home state after failing to appear in court on animal abuse charges has been arrested in East Texas, along with 79 snakes.
Wood County deputies say 45-year-old David James Beauchemin of Oakdale, La., was arrested in Quitman on Wednesday on 22 outstanding warrants accusing him of failure to appear in court as ordered in Allen Parish, La.
Sheriff’s Sgt. Kilan Polk tells the Tyler Morning Telegraph that deputies rescued 79 boa constrictors, pythons and anacondas — some as long as 20 feet. The serpents have been turned over to the Humane Society of North Texas in Fort Worth.
How’d you like to have been the Humane Society volunteer working on the day those bad boys got brought into the shelter?