Dante, the missing python, has been found.

“We were on our way home from work at about 5:30 (p.m.) when we got a call from our neighbors,” said Diana Sleiertin, of MaxMan Reptile Rescue. “Their 13-year-old son saw him coming from the canal.”

Sleiertin said when she got home, he was sitting on the side of the road about 20 feet from her house in Jordan with the neighbors. When she tried to pull him out, he just anchored his tail in the brush.

“It was as if he said, ‘No way,” like ‘Oh, man, I'm busted. I gotta go home,'” she said.

Sleiertin put him on a heating pad and into a duffel. Pythons need a temperature of 75 degrees or better, she said.

“He's a tropical snake. If his body temperature is exposed to a colder temperature, he can get a respiratory infection,” she said.

Dante was quite cool when he was found, Sleiertin said. She put him into a large travel duffel, and he will be transferred to a quarantine cage, where the heat can be moderated.

“I am very attached to him,” she said. “I'm a bleeding heart to take in rescues that are sick. I have the bleeding heart tattooed to my forehead.”

As Dante's primary caregiver, Sleiertin said she tends to humanize him as well as her other animals.

“He huffs and puffs,” she said, “but he's really very docile. People are terrified, but the snake is not dangerous. There are far more dog maulings than snake attacks.”

She said in the two years she's worked with Dante, more than 1,000 children have pet him.

Sleiertin's tortoise, Speedie, missing a week ago, turned up when a television reporter came on the scene,

“Speedie flips and grunts if you interrupt her path, then she goes right back in the same direction,” Sleiertin said. “She is really quite stubborn.

“We greatly appreciate the positive response we got from the community,” she said. “Without them we knew he would not do well. A huge thank you!”

Staff writer Kathleen Barran can be reached at 253-5311 ext. 238 or kathleen.barran@lee.net