40 pythons confiscated from Canadian couple inside Toronto-area motel room

With Canadians still on edge after a massive snake killed two boys last weekend, police removed 40 pythons from a Toronto-area motel on Thursday.

A landlord called police after evicting a couple, who then moved into the motel with their pets.

Police arrived as the couple was out, and in turn called animal control experts after finding clear plastic bins filled with the slithering, hissing brood.

“The snakes were not being suitably cared for and were in distress,” police said Friday, the National Post reported.

The snakes were Ball pythons, popular among reptile collectors because of their docile temperaments, the Toronto Sun said.

They ranged from one-foot to four-feet long. Because it’s illegal to own pythons in Brampton, a city on the outskirts of Toronto, the reptiles are being cared for by an animal rescue agency.

“They are a banned animal in Brantford and we can’t adopt them out. We don’t have the facilities to house them long term,” the SPCA’s Brandon James told the Sun.

Police haven’t pressed charges. Canadians learned all about pythons this month after 6-year-old Connor Barthe and his brother Noah, 4, died in New Brunswick.

They were staying with friends who lived above a Cambellton pet store when an African rock python escaped its cage and smothered them.

CBC News reported this week that the African python escaped through a hole in the roof of its cage where a fan was missing.

More from GlobalPost: Python kills 2 Canadian boys as they sleep