Bronx Zoo Cobra Found

MYFOXNY.COM - Wildlife Conservation Society officials announced that they have recovered the Egyptian cobra that had escaped almost a week earlier.

Zoo staff found the reptile coiled up in a dark corner of the Reptile House at about 9 a.m. Thursday, the director of the zoo said at an afternoon news conference. A source had told Fox 5 of the animal's recovery ahead of the news concerence.

"She looks in really good condition," said Jim Breheny, the zoo director. "Our responsibility is to her to make sure that she's in good shape and that her welfare is being taken care of."

The highly venomous 20-inch-long snake escaped from a cage in a quarantine room sometime Friday, although at that time zoo officials said then that the cobra was likely hiding out somewhere inside the Reptile House, which had remained closed since the weekend.

Breheny said the zoo probably would reopen the Reptile House by next weekend.

Not long after the cobra slithered out of its cage, someone created a Twitter account called @bronxzooscobra and quickly garnered almost 200,000 followers.

The story of both the cobra's escape and the humorous Twitter feed soon became a sensation online and on television. Even Mayor Mike Bloomberg tweeted the "cobra" this week.

A reporter asked zoo director Breheny what he thought of the cobra Twitter account.

"We appreciated that element but at the same time we needed to stay focused on recovering the animal because it was a serious situation and we couldn't lose sight of that," Breheny said. "So we did not at all want to be distracted by some of that lightheartedness."

Apparently this afternoon the "cobra" itself wasn't giving away that it had been caught. Around 2:10 p.m. it tweeted: "If you see a bag of peanuts inexplicably moving along the ground at Yankee Stadium today. Just ignore it. It's probably nothing."