Pythons Smuggled In Queens Man’s Pants: Feds

NEW YORK CITY — This Queens man isn’t happy to see you, he’s smuggling snakes in his pants.

Or so say U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials, who said they arrested Calvin Bautista, 36, at the United States-Canada border with three Burmese pythons packed in his pants.

Bautista, of Richmond Hill, was trying to illegally slither snakes in the U.S., according to a federal indictment.

He appeared for arraignment on a smuggling charge Tuesday in an Albany federal court — more than four years after his arrest off a bus at the Champlain Port of Entry on the border, records show.

Burmese pythons are native to Southeast Asia, but are popular among some reptile-loving Americans as pets. Their trade into the United States, however, is restricted by an international treaty designed to protect species whose survival could be threatened by human sales.

Bautista didn’t have the proper papers for his pants pythons, the indictment states.

He also didn’t declare he planned to import a species listed as “injurious to human beings,” according to court documents.

Constrictor snakes such as Burmese pythons occasionally, albeit rarely, kill their owners, but have not been linked to human deaths in Florida, where they are a stubborn invasive species, according to the United States Geological Survey. Indeed, Burmese pythons imported as pets have escaped into Florida wildlands and currently threaten many endangered species.

Bautista, if convicted, faces up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.