When they found a 6-foot python in the plumbing of an apartment building in Australia late last month, it reminded me that big, loose snakes have tended to appear in Madison in five-year increments -- and this is our year.

The Australian snake was in the toilet of an upscale, 10th-floor apartment in Darwin, the capital of Australia's Northern Territory.

The Northern Territory News reported: "It is believed the snake had been lurking in the plumbing for some time."

The paper went on to quote Chris Peberdy, "Darwin's famous reptile wrangler," who said: "When I saw it, I was pretty shocked. It's one thing to have a green frog in the toilet but not a 6-foot python. It would certainly scare you if it came up from the depths of the toilet. I had to give him a good wash as he was wet and a bit smelly."

In early 1998, not long after I began writing a newspaper column, I got a call from an employee at the Dorn Hardware Store on Broom Street. A customer had just left the store, muttering to himself and having purchased leather gloves, safety goggles and a dusk mask.

"I don't know if this is a story or not," the clerk told me. He said his young customer, who lived in an apartment on Henry Street, had walked into his kitchen and found a 6-foot snake slithering on the floor. He sprinted out of the apartment, phoned police, and then went to Dorn where he outfitted himself a la Bill Murray in "Ghostbusters."

"He was pretty nervous," the clerk said. The snake was believed to have belonged to a previous tenant.

The worst part of the story was that when police met the tenant at the apartment building and went inside, the snake was gone. They speculated it had slithered into a hole in the wall by the stove 's pilot light.

The tenant, understandably, did not want to live in the apartment with the snake at large. The landlord put him up at a motel and called Pat Doyle, a private animal-control specialist from Cross Plains. Doyle set a trap for the snake, and when he went back to check on it a couple of days later, found that the snake had ventured into the trap.

"But it escaped," Doyle said. "That's when I knew it was big."

The tenant eventually decided to move from the apartment altogether, but while he was removing the last of his things, he spotted the snake again, under the kitchen sink this time. It was still there when Doyle arrived.

"I grabbed it," he told me. "It was wrapped around a pipe and at first I thought it was dead, but then I saw its tongue move. I put it in a gunny sack."

Doyle turned the snake over to the city Health Department. The next day they told him it was 6-and-a-half feet long and a boa constrictor.

Doyle asked: "How is it doing?"

"It has eaten a rat and is resting comfortably."

Five years later, in May 2003, an ordinance was passed in Madison that prohibited most exotic animals being kept as pets. An exception was made for pythons and boa constrictors under 10 feet in length.

Remembering the excitement on Henry Street, I wrote a column wondering if anyone in Madison really needed to keep an 8- or 9-foot pet snake. I immediately heard from "reptile hobbyists" and breeders who said I didn't understand the allure. They were right about that.

Later that year, in October, the "Jaws" of Madison-area snakes showed up in a back yard on the East Side. My colleague George Hesselberg wrote about it.

George quoted a Commercial Avenue homeowner saying he was relaxing in his yard with his kids when he spotted the snake: "It was lying across the yard, 5 or 6 feet in front of me, sitting about 3 or 4 feet up, looking at me and sticking his tongue out."

"It" turned out to be a 16-foot Burmese python that was owned by someone else in the neighborhood, in violation of the new ordinance. Police and animal control eventually captured it.

It is now five years since that python episode, so if form holds, we are due for another sighting. There actually was one, earlier this year, but it was in Beloit, so I'm not sure that counts. It was only 1 foot long, but it was a Western Diamondback rattlesnake, found in a vacated home.

The venomous snake -- which could grow to 6 feet -- definitely got the attention of a representative from the Rock County Humane Society, who said he wasn't sure they would euthanize it. "To euthanize something, we have to put our hands on it," he said. "Nobody's touching this."

Where's Bill Murray when you need him?

Contact Doug Moe at 608-252-6446 or dmoe@madison.com.