"You have a snake hanging from your car," another driver told Marika Suominen-Yeh when they stopped one evening last week at a red light on Capital Boulevard.

She thought it might be one of her kids' toys caught under her 2001 Toyota Sienna minivan, but traffic was too heavy to investigate. After a short distance, she pulled off on Ponderosa Service Road.

No snake.

Danny Markadakis pulled up as she searched. He wanted to know: Did she lose something? She explained the snake warning.

"It might be the one that's in the middle of the street over there," he said.

A former snake owner, Markadakis had noticed the reptile as he slowed for a turn. It didn't look indigenous.

Markadakis waited for a lull in traffic, then scooped up the python in a blanket and took it home. Markadakis said the snake was curled up in the road, and it was docile when he picked it up.

Native to Africa, the ball python is a non-venomous snake popular with the pet trade. "I'm sure it was somebody's pet," he said. "I just couldn't see him get killed in the middle of the road."

The next day he took the snake to Avian & Exotic Animal Care where it was treated with anti= biotics for mild abdominal burns. "She's doing just fine," said Jason Watkins, managing technician at Avian.

Suominen-Yeh asked around in her Wakefield neighborhood, but found no one who claimed ownership. So, the veterinary clinic found the python a good home, and Suominen-Yeh is trying to put the incident behind her. "It's not very likely," she said, "that there's going to be another one."

Still, now she glances around her car before getting in.

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